pneumatic china

Pneumatic cylinder are used since the time that the steam engines became popular in the 19th century. The start was in England during the industrial revolution. The most common used were cylinders with a steel tube and tie rods. The end covers, front and back is die-casting steel. The piston in a standard round steel. Everybody made his own type, diameter and version. Can be single acting with a spring or double acting.

The common used dimensions in Inches.
That is why the inside diameters of the "today"cylinders are still subtracted from the Inch dimension. The following dimensions are used by everybody 16, 20, 25, 32, 40, 50, 63, 80, 100 and 125. It looks strange but it is all coming from the period of time.

After 1945 the industry started to work more and more with dimension standards so the machine parts are interchangeable. In Europe the French CETOP was one of the first the make a standard for pneumatic cylinders. For example RP52. At that time most of the leading manufacturers had there own cylinders with own dimensions. So the cylinder of Martonair (SM900 series), Festo, Parker, SMC and Pneumax had cylinders only for mounting with parts of that manufacturer.

Most of these dimension were adapted by the later, around 1986) ISO standard 6432 (for micro cylinders) and 6431 for bigger cylinders.

Around 1992 the German machine builders association VDMA also put their name with number 24652 on it. This brings a big advantage for the mounting parts of the cylinders, because they can all be the same. The rod clevis, mounting clevis, float joint and mounting flanges are the same. There are even companies, like Nisolio Resmini, that only manufacture mounting parts for ISO cylinders.
In 2004 the ISO commission renewed the standard for pneumatic cylinder and called it ISO 15552.
Mostly the cylinders are building with aluminum profile extruded tubes.

And the end covers are from aluminum pressofusione die-casting. Because of low labor costs these cylinder parts are mostly produced in China even by big brands like Cammozi, SMC, Pneumax and others.

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