The development trend of Airtac pneumatic products

The development trend of AirTAC pneumatic products is mainly reflected in the following aspects:

1. Miniaturization and integration. In some applications of Airtac pneumatic components, such as in shoe manufacturing, resistor, capacitor manufacturing, and circuit board testing, the limited space requires that the overall size of Airtac pneumatic components be as small as possible, and miniaturization is the main development trend. According to surveys, the demand for miniaturized components doubles approximately every five years. The integration of air valves is not only the assembly of several valves, but also includes functions such as sensors and programmable controllers. The purpose of integration is not only to save space, but also to facilitate installation, maintenance and improve reliability.

2. Combination and intelligence. The simplest component combination is a cylinder with valve and switch. In material handling, a combination of cylinders, swing cylinders, pneumatic chucks and vacuum suction cups has been used. There is also a combination of moving small items, which is to combine two cylinders with guides according to the X and Y axes respectively. It is also equipped with a solenoid valve and a programmable controller. It has a compact structure, takes up little space, and has an adjustable stroke.

3. Precision. In order to reduce the swing of the piston rod of ordinary cylinders, some companies have developed elliptical piston cylinders, parallel twin-cylinder cylinders, cylinders with guide rods, etc.;in order to accurately position the cylinder, brake cylinders have been developed. In order to make the positioning of the cylinder more accurate, sensors, proportional valves, etc. are used to achieve feedback control, and the positioning accuracy reaches 0.01mm.

4. High speed. In order to improve productivity, the pace of automation is accelerating, and high-speed is an inevitable trend. Currently, the piston speed range of the cylinder is 50-750mm/s. Under current market demand, the piston speed of the cylinder is required to be increased to 5m/s, and up to 10m/s.

5. Oil-free, odorless and sterile. Since the exhaust gas of Airtac pneumatic components is directly discharged into the air, human beings have increasingly higher requirements for the environment and do not want air with oil mist to pollute the environment. Therefore, oil-free Airtac pneumatic components will become popular. There are also some special industries, such as food, beverages, pharmaceuticals, electronics, etc., which have stricter requirements for air. In addition to being oil-free, they also require odorless, sterile, etc. Filters with such special requirements will be continuously developed.

6. High life, high reliability and self-diagnosis function. Airtac pneumatic components are mostly used in automatic production lines. The failure of components often affects the operation of the entire line. A sudden stop of the production line will cause serious losses. For this reason, higher engineering reliability of Airtac pneumatic components is proposed. Require.

7. Energy saving and low power consumption. The low power consumption of Airtac pneumatic components is not only for energy saving, but more importantly, it can be combined with microelectronics technology. Solenoid valves with a power consumption of 0.5W have long been commercialized, and 0.4W and 0.3W air valves have also been developed, which can be directly controlled by a PC.

8. Mechatronics. In order to accurately achieve the preset control goals, closed-circuit feedback control should be used. In order to realize this control method, it is necessary to solve the mutual conversion between the computer's electrical signal, the sensor feedback signal and the pneumatic control signal.