We were at a recent tourney and bent our claw on the fence, we bent a pneumatic piston rod. A couple questions are: Should we buy another double-acting piston or try to straighten the Piston rod? Will the rod be to flimsy and break when we try to bend it? If we don’t get the rod straight enough and try using the piston will the rod hurt something inside the piston?
I attached some pictures.
Thanks for the help.
~Cason
If you get it straight enough to actually operate, the seal of the cylinder will probably start leaking. These are standard industrial “non-repairable” air cylinders…that means you have to buy a new one. Most vex resellers sell these individually. Or you can get one from PLC-center, but shipping will get you.
Thanks!
In addition to the seal leaking if you can straighten enough to operate, it won’t ever function with the same force because you’ll never bend it back to perfectly straight so the cylinder will be fighting against extra friction when trying to operate.
I would suggest finding a way to get the cylinder by itself from a supplier. When buying the exact cylinder VEX sells from SMC, I believe they rub somewhere around $15-$20 which isn’t terrible.
