Servo cylinder is widely used because of its many characteristics in control application. In the application of servo manipulator, servo electric cylinder plays an important role. But what is the difference between the traditional cylinder and the electric cylinder? Today Max tells you about the difference between the two.

We will compare the components, system design, equipment assembly and production operation.

components and parts

Executive Agency

From the actuator components, the pneumatic system with the cylinder are mainly solenoid valve, filter, pressure reducing valve and other components, and its power output source is the compressor air pump, the cost apportioned to each shaft is low. Each axis of the electric cylinder system needs a servo driver as the power unit output. At this point, the hardware cost of servo cylinder and driver system is obviously higher.

control equipment

From the perspective of control components, both pneumatic system and electric cylinder servo system need to use PLC and other controllers.

The pneumatic system needs relay to control the cylinder solenoid valve, and to achieve some complex motion control, the pneumatic system also needs to use additional sensors.

The electric cylinder system can realize all kinds of motion functions through the above servo driver, without additional control components.

system design

Hardware

In terms of hardware, the pneumatic system has many components and the system is more complex, so its hardware design time and cost are high.

The structure of the electric cylinder system is very simple, and the component types are only cylinder, driver and controller, so the hardware system integration is relatively simple.

Software

From the perspective of application, it is difficult to distinguish the difference between the two, because it depends on the application situation.

System assembly

Mechanics

In the assembly process of pneumatic system, due to the large number of components involved, the workload of installation and assembly is large. In addition to the installation of cylinder, it is also necessary to install solenoid valve, filter and pressure reducing valve, and sometimes the installation of sensor elements should be considered.

When using the electric cylinder, you only need to install the electric cylinder, and its push rod accessories are consistent with the traditional cylinder. In addition, only the power and feedback need to be connected to the driver through the quick plug cable.

wiring

When wiring the pneumatic system, the solenoid valve cable, valve island switch and gas pipeline should be arranged. If position feedback is needed, the wiring of position sensor should be considered.

The wiring of electric cylinder system only needs to consider the motor power and feedback cable.

Cabinet

In addition, the cabinet integration cost of pneumatic system will be slightly higher, because there are many types of system components, while the cabinet components of electric cylinder system are only ordinary servo drivers.

Production and operation

In production and operation, the biggest difference between the two products is the energy consumption cost of the system.

As mentioned earlier, the power consumption efficiency of the cylinder is not high due to the air pressure as the intermediate medium, and there is leakage problem in the operation process; while the power of the electric cylinder is directly converted into mechanical energy through electrical energy, its energy consumption efficiency is high.

For the calculation of operation energy consumption, we can refer to the following formula:

The energy consumption cost of the cylinder = the amount of compressed air used for one operation x the number of actions x the unit price of compressed air energy

Energy consumption cost of electric cylinder = power consumption of one operation x number of actions x unit price of electricity charge

From the above analysis, although the hardware purchase cost of electric cylinder is high, it can save a lot in design, assembly and operation, especially in the system energy consumption.

As for the cost performance of the electric cylinder, I think today is just to provide you with an analysis and evaluation method, which is better or worse depends on the analysis data of the actual case.