Pneumatic cylinder system

Abstract

A cylinder positioning system (1) comprising a control unit for a pneumatically driven cylinder (14) in a cylinder chamber is provided. The control unit comprising a controller configured to control a set of drive units of the cylinder positioning system. Each drive unit emits a drive current to a respective electromagnetic direct acting valve (9,10, 11, 12) of the cylinder positioning system. Each respective electromagnetic direct acting valve has a closing/opening time of less than 2 ms. The control unit is configured to receive a set position for the cylinder and an actual position for the cylinder, to compare the set position of the cylinder with the actual position of the cylinder and to emit control signals to the drive units to move the cylinder from the actual position towards the set position. By providing a very short time for actuation of the valves, in combination with an actual position for the cylinder a closed loop control can be achieved to control the flow to the actuating cylinder to be proportional over essentially the entire dynamic range of the pneumatic position control system. This in turn can make the control more accurate and robust and with smaller latency.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.