How much can they lift? Anyone done the maths?
1 Like
I know that they have been lackluster compared to what I expected. There best use is motorsharing.
I think one has a force of 2 pounds
1 Like
Depends on the pressure.
psi x the area of the cylinder being acted on (it changes in each direction)
Go do the maths.
1 Like
That sounds accurate 4 are to weak to lift my robot
Using an online calculator (10mm bore at 30psi), it outputs about 3.65 pound feet.
4 Likes
Thank you all for your replies. I’m interested to see if it’s possible to make an arm that goes up and down using only pneumatics. Might not be usable but always worth trying!
1 Like
You can always add additional air cylinders to get the force you need. Also, be sure to counterbalance the arm so the air cylinders only have to list the payload, not the weight of the arm.
4 Likes
IQ Pneumatics I believe are much weaker
1 Like
They’re talking about VEX IQ pneumatics. Whereas VRC pneumatics can have 100 psi, VEXIQ can only have 30psi (though they have a pump that allows them to fill up during the match).
7 Likes
The pumps only pressurize to 17-19 psi. That’s the highest you’ll get. Cylinders designed to fire on anything above 7 psi. Double cylinders together gets you about 3lbs pushing.
2 Likes
That’s interesting, I had expected higher based on the reservoir being rated for 30psi. @bkahl is it true that the system will only pressurize to ~19psi?
1 Like
Yes, i reached out to Vex because I had one pump running around 14PSI and cylinders going slowly. They actually responded and said verbatim even as low as 14 psi is acceptable. The highest i have seen when testing (it’s easy to add a simple air gauge in line) is 18-19psi. They responded too that we will see variation in kits too. I was able to find some of our kits were way more reliable at keeping up to 18 psi, you can hear it, and see it when robot is running. And the weaker one, all kids complain about it. If you hook up more than 2 cylinders, performance suffers on that one. So our team try’s not to use that one in competition.
2 Likes