Rodless Pneumatic Cylinder works in temperatures to 500 ºF.
Press Release Summary:
OSP Series Thermocylinder can be used for door opening and transfer in extreme temperature applications. It uses heat transfer and thermodynamic principles to allow coolant to pass through entire length of cylinder. As coolant passes through, heat energy is absorbed and barrel behaves similar to water jacket. This keeps heat away from cylinder bore where plastic and rubber parts are used.
Original Press Release:
If You Can't Handle The Heat, Let The Thermocylinder Handle It For You
The Thermocylinder is a rodless pneumatic cylinder (OSP series) designed for extreme temperature applications (glass and steel foundries, bakeries etc). Generally, rodless cylinders have a maximum operating temperature of approximately 150°F. Hoerbiger-Origa Corporation has designed a rodless pneumatic cylinder capable of reaching temperatures up to 500°F.
Examples; In glass foundries oven doors must be opened and closed repeatedly throughout the day. This type of application could expose employees (needed to manually operate the door(s)) to high temperatures. Also, Bakery applications where workers reach into hot ovens to transfer or rotate product.
Hoerbiger-Origa rodless cylinders are commonly used in both door opening and transfer applications, these examples are just a couple of the many applications the Thermocylinder could save time and minimize the chance of injury in high temperature environments.
Using heat transfer and thermodynamic principles, coupled with specially designed endcaps, our OSP series cylinders achieved running temperatures between 400 and 450 F with a top temperature at 500 F.
The OSP style cylinder's unique barrel design allows coolant to pass through the entire length of the cylinder, exiting the other end. As coolant passes through the cylinder, heat energy is absorbed (via. forced convection) in the lower temperature coolant. By doing this, the barrel behaves similar to a water jacket keeping heat energy away from the cylinder bore (where plastic and rubber parts are used).
As the higher temperature coolant leaves the cylinder, it enters a heat exchanger where a blower is connected. The blower/exchanger combination allows heat energy to be removed from the coolant and released to the atmosphere (via. convection). Once coolant has passed through the heat exchanger/blower, it re-enters the cylinder at a lower temperature and the process is repeated. The amount of heat energy removed has been calculated at 9240 BTUs/hr for a 40mm bore cylinder with a 65 inch stroke.
The Thermocylinder design presented several challenges. First, the cylinder must be both air and fluid tight throughout its entire pressure range. Next, coolant had to be brought into and out of the barrel through the endcaps. To prevent possible leakage, special high temperature gaskets where placed between the endcaps and barrel of the cylinder. To get coolant to the barrel cavities, we modified the endcap and endcap mounting screws. To distribute coolant evenly through the cylinder, the coolant must separate from one flow path to 5 separate paths (created in the endcaps) then back to one path upon exiting. To do this, and keep the OSP cylinders streamline appearance, a special manifold was designed. The manifold attaches directly to the face of the endcap. Using this manifold in conjunction with the cylinder endcaps, we reduced the number of connections to and from the cylinder from 5 to 1, making plumbing to the cylinder easy.
The Thermocylinder provides the means of using a rodless cylinder in higher temperature applications. How heat energy is removed from the coolant can be done by a number of different ways. In our test we used a simple heat exchanger/blower combination. A chiller would be a good way of controlling coolant temperature and flow into the cylinder. Also, depending on the application, heat removed from the cylinder could be redirected for use in another part of a foundry.
