I am currently working on organizing and cataloging my team’s pneumatic components. Part of this process is sorting and then finding a way to store all these pneumatic cylinders (see below). Previously we kept them in a tub, but that was a complete mess, and finding the one that was actually needed would take far longer than it should have. What sort of methods do you use to organize/store your cylinders?
This is not specific to cylinders (and probably not super useful at this point), but I’d give the same advice as for screws: try to standardize on a few diameters and lengths, so you have less oddballs to keep track of and sort through.
We’ve had a tote of cylinders, box of cylinders, bag of cylinders.
Personally I would organize by stroke, or by bore size depending on what’s easier for you. When you’re designing and need X length, you can check that specific box/bin/whatever. Maybe a <4" bin, 4-6 bin, etc.
I would also zip tie pairs of the same size cylinders together. Two or three times this year I ordered a cylinder size we already had because we didn’t find two of the same when looking the first time.
I found a little bit of both. <5" of different bore. But longer keeping the same bore together made more sense.
I have bins that can fit up to 12" stroke, and up to 2" bore (at approx that). Above that there aren’t as many cylinders and can be stored on back of shelf behind some other bins – or maybe into some long narrow box.
We just went to 2 totes >1" in one tote and 3/4" &1" in the other tote. Then <6" are in a box and 6-8" are in another box with longer ones loose in the bottom of the totes. This has got to be better than what we had, all of them shoved in a cupboard and cardboard boxes of misc. pneumatic parts stacked on top of them lol
3946 built a wooden box that was about 3’ long (for our longest cylinders) and about 12" wide, with some dividers to accommodate long cylinders, 12-16" stroke cylinders, 6-12" stroke cylinders, and short ones. It had garage-door style handles at either end. This never traveled - this was for our historical/prototyping cylinders. It looks like your version wouldn’t need to be as long.
For fittings, valves, and such, the usual small parts boxes with the removable bins, similar to the one at the upper right of OP’s picture. IIRC, we had one with larger bins and one as in the picture.
We hung a 2’x4’ piece of peg board on the wall and hang our cylinders by their rear mounting holes. Harbor Freight sells some long peg board hooks that can hold a couple cylinders each. We wrap rubber bands across the rod and front threads so they don’t extend
We divided into several bins roughly based on stroke and diameter - something akin to “short and skinny, long and skinny, large” (with “large” being anything more than about a 1.5in bore, and “short” being maybe a 5in total body length or shorter).
But really, the most helpful thing was putting a piece of masking tape on the side and writing the bore and stroke, so you don’t have to measure while you search and don’t have to hold your breath and hope that it’ll be the right length when you pull the rod out.
