Choosing the Right Pneumatic Drives and Slides
Pneumatic guided drives and slides are the workhorses of industrial automation. They are well-proven and can adapt to a growing range of applications in which adding guidance improves performance. They are cost-effective as well, with many variants and configuration options to ensure great reliability and longevity. If an engineer knows the options, as a recent Hydraulics & Pneumatics article notes, there’s a guided drive or slide for most applications requiring stability or repeatable precision.
Identifying Pneumatic Leaks with IIoT
Advancements in sensors and software have made IIoT valuable and cost-effective for most solutions. Applying these principles to pneumatic air leaks, as Justin Lesley of Motion and Chris Noble of Emerson point out in a recent Hydraulics & Pneumatics article, is a matter of asking the right questions.
“We all know that air leaks are a continual issue with pneumatically powered equipment, but how can you determine how that lost air translates into wasted dollars?” they write. “The obvious answer is that you have to measure air usage and use your local energy rates to calculate costs. What isn’t obvious is choosing which sensor and software tools you should use to quantify pneumatic inefficiency.”
A “Customized” Pneumatic Design
Creating custom solutions can also create higher costs to go with those solutions. A new white paper, produced with Fabco-Air, notes that when needing a pneumatic cylinder, the custom choice can quickly become expensive, especially if you need to work with many cylinders at once. The white paper discusses four design aspects that can help in selecting the right cylinder for the job.
