Pneumatics losing power

Our team is using pneumatics to raise and lower a simple gate using two pneumatic cylinders to actuate a scissor mechanism. The mechanism has been in place for over a month and appears to be losing power over time. Where it was originally able to push 2 green Full Volume scoring elements off the top of the gate if it was blocked, it now has trouble lifting the gate and cannot move any scoring elements.

  • They checked the hoses for leaks, and pressure is released when removing a hose.
  • The pneumatics charge for 8 seconds when the program is started (up from 4 which worked previously), and the pump is set to run whenever the cylinders are actuating
  • They added a second canister to see if more storage would help

Has anyone else see a decrease in power over time and do you know a solution? Thank you!

Yes. Seeing it now and cannot explain. Pump does not seem to work consistently. No idea why yet. So following to see if others have ideas?

My kids are finding this inconsistency also. So they are not relying on the amount of pump time at the beginning of the match. They do pump for a certain amount to at least fill the system with some air at the beginning of the match, but they coded to turn on pump during activation to make sure it has consistent pressure and turn off pump when finished the task. Your kids can try that to see if it helps with their system. If they are still having issues, likely the friction of their mechanism might be the issue.

Cheers.

The default IIRC is the pump is enabled when the program is run. I would just turn the pump on and then leave it on until the match is done.

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Thanks for the info. My kids don’t have issues when they just run the pump when they need to activate and stop it when activation task is done. But yes, for the original poster, they can definitely just run the pump the whole time. But for my kids, they want to optimize their power draw so they can have the majority of the power to the motors during the match so they didn’t want the pump running the whole match.

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For our pneumatics, we’ve noticed that if we spam it out and in constantly overtime it looses air. however, in regular matches we’ve experienced nothing like this. If photos provided that would help.

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