I guess what I am asking is, if anyone can show me a guide or some kind of information that would aid me in understanding them. I have heard about them before but I know little to nothing about them, such as force, speed and other aspects of them. I saw on the Bimba site that you could get these, and I was wondering if someone could help explain them to me, I had look for guides but had no success.
Thanks
My team has had some experience with these. Pretty much, its a way of taking the linear motion of a piston and turning into rotary motion. It works by a piston moving a rack, which turns a pinion, much like a car steering wheel works (kinda). This allows you to pneumatically turn something. The rotation is normally limited, so it does not behave like a motor. But if you only need to rotate something out of the way, like a door or something, it would turn it.
As for force and power, the one we used was a half inch bore cylinder, so ours had very little force. it was able to lift the small moment arm we needed it to, but it wouldn’t be able to fight much resistance. Also, it behaves just like a cylinder, so if you’re looking for speed (or kick!) you would need a larger bore than what we used, because ours simply lacked power of any sort. You can also play around with the air speed regulators to find the optimum power.
This is a different model than the one we used, but its the same general thing:
http://www.bimba.com/Products/PneuTurn/PneuTurnRotaryActuators/
you could also look for others actuators. In my humble opinion, if you want to use it as a kicker, I don’t think this will be what you’re looking for. However, you’re free to experiment, and if you find it works, let me know!
Also, one more thing from my team’s experience… be careful with them, they can break :ahh:
The rotary actuators work by taking the linear motion of a pneumatic cylinder rod and converting it to a rotary motion.
Basically, you connect an air line to each end of the actuator. By pressurizing one end, you will turn the center shaft, usually about 90 degrees. By pressurizing the other end, you will rotate it back past center and 90 degrees the other direction. The Bmba site says they make them from 45 degrees to 1080 degrees (3 turns).
With 60 PSI to work with, you get limited torque output, but there are some specific places where these are beneficial.
If you these, be very careful with the end connectors for the tubing. The threaded connection to the cylinder is very small and a slight impact can break it off.
Do they have a good rotational speed?
Rotational speed is dependent on the supplied air pressure and the load it is required to move.