Failed pneumatic cylinder (on the left) next to an identical good one (on the right). The brass/bronze sleeve bushing is pushed in, and air leaks rapidly from that area. We have failed 2 in this way this year.
How long are the cylinders?
We did the exact same thing. Were you using a stroke limiter around the rod that matched the OD of that bushing?
Did they fail under mild circumstances, or under heavy stress?
We made sure we had a hard stop on our shooter to prevent breaking the cylinder, and flow regulators on the collector to slow them down.
A hard stop will prevent the end cap from coming off.
The brass bushing being pushed in usually indicates a bent rod.
Did the Rod take a hit while extended?
We have a stroke limiter of significantly larger diameter than that of the bushing.
It’s not shock loaded too hard, there’s a rubber block on each end to prevent it from damaging things like this. We don’t want to slow it down, because we want it to be fast.
Ours failed under shock load with stroke limiters that were not oversize to avoid only hitting the bushing. We now have much thicker wall on our new stroke limiters. When it happened to our team it was the first time I had seen failure like this.