Re: New technique: three position piston control

In lugnet.technic, Mark Bellis wrote:
> In lugnet.technic, Kevin L. Clague wrote:
>> In lugnet.technic, Kevin L. Clague wrote:
>>> In lugnet.technic, Mark Bellis wrote:
>>>
>>> <snip>
>>>>
>>>> Interesting stuff!  Should make walkers move more smoothly, with the possibility
>>>> of more groups of legs.  The trick will then be reversing all the groups, since
>>>> it was easier with just two, using two polarity reversers.
>>>>
>>>> I have a centre-stop mechanism for pneumatic steering for a JCB.  It's not part
>>>> of an automatic system though, since I don't yet have an application for that.
>>>
>>> Was this single or dual piston?
>>
>> Mark,
>>   Did I miss your answer on this?
>> Kev
>
> No, I was so busy at work that I missed a couple of days online!
>
> I had a look at both, but a dual piston scheme works better for steering because
> of equalising the piston area and pushing at least 3 switches.  In fact I have
> two cylinders in parallel at the moment.  One problem I can foresee with that is
> that there is a net force towards the middle due to the auto-expansion effect,
> so the mechanism in the middle has to have good compressive strength.

<snip>

 I used some axle joints to optimise cylinder position limiting in normal logic
> systems (without offset switches) in my Octopus arm.  The base of one axle hole
> is on the end switch and the other end hits the top of the cylinder, limiting
> its contraction to the right amount.  This reduces air usage on the logic board,
> speeding things up a bit.

Do you have a website where I can peruse your work?

>
> Mark