This year is the first year that my team has been able to use Pneumaticsand we were wondering how many swiches of a piston you would get if you had two tanks? We are using two single acting pistons and one double acting piston.
It really depends on how much force you need. If you just have it shoot full blast it won’t last you more than a few shots, but if you use a pressure limiter you can get dozens of actuations.
I couldn’t help notice, but the difference the position of a space can make. 
“Pneumatics and”
“Pneumatic sand”
The way the piston works is you have an amount of air stored up. Each time you open the soloniod the air pressure equalizes inside the piston and inside the air tanks.
This means every stroke is weaker than the last. So how many strokes you get is dependent entirely on strength required before you consider yourself “out of power”.
If you do not have a pressure regulator. Each stroke will take the same amount of air as any other stroke will.
So just because you need force N and you apply 10 times that force does not mean you lose less air than if you needed all 10*F. It does mean that you will have more strokes because it will be a while before you can no longer push with force F.
Hello there,
It really depends on what you are using the pneumatics for…
Last year in Toss Up we used two single acting pistons for our tosser and we were able to get around 10-12 full powered tosses before the force started to drop…
Hope this helps !