Ken Roach
Lifetime Supporting Member + Moderator
I have an application where it would be ideal to simplify a pneumatic cylinder that extends and retracts a locking pin mechanism on a movable platform that does not (easily) have its own power supply, because it's moved very infrequently.
The operator always hand-operates the lock and unlock valve. But the mechanism itself is not visible to her and we need a way to indicate that the cylinder has actually reached the full extent of its travel and has not jammed or been blocked. There are two sets of locks, about 50 feet from one another, and the operator is closest to one of them and can't see the "far side" unit.
Hydraulic master/slave are disfavored because of the environment it's in.
All I came up with was a push-pull operation cable with a flag at the operator's console that literally shows the position of the cylinder mechanism. Because she will be operating the valve during the transition, she will be able to verify that it changes positions, so a broken cable will fail to indicate and allow her to investigate the mechanism.
Am I overlooking some other fundamental principle I could use ?
The operator always hand-operates the lock and unlock valve. But the mechanism itself is not visible to her and we need a way to indicate that the cylinder has actually reached the full extent of its travel and has not jammed or been blocked. There are two sets of locks, about 50 feet from one another, and the operator is closest to one of them and can't see the "far side" unit.
Hydraulic master/slave are disfavored because of the environment it's in.
All I came up with was a push-pull operation cable with a flag at the operator's console that literally shows the position of the cylinder mechanism. Because she will be operating the valve during the transition, she will be able to verify that it changes positions, so a broken cable will fail to indicate and allow her to investigate the mechanism.
Am I overlooking some other fundamental principle I could use ?