I was working with a machine builder in Indiana that builds OEM machines for the medical equipment industry.  The customer was experiencing failures and unacceptable operating life with the pneumatic cylinders that they used to move parts into an acid bath.  Although the cylinders were constructed of stainless steel, they exhibited premature shaft wear which caused the cylinders to fail in the corrosive atmosphere.

After investigating the application, we determined that the cause of the premature shaft wear was the design of the cylinder bushing. After understanding the root cause, we  replaced the failing cylinders with a specially designed SMC Pneumatic cylinder. This special SMC Pneumatic cylinder utilizes a different (and better!) bushing design than the other manufacturer’s cylinder.

The special SMC Pneumatic cylinder has now been in service for more than six months and is holding up much better than the other manufacturer’s product. The operating life of the SMC cylinder is at least double that of the previous cylinder.

Due to SMC Pneumatic’s ongoing attention to reducing their internal manufacturing costs, the customer’s purchase price of  this specially designed cylinder was actually less than that of the competitor’s standard cylinder!

As an SMC Pneumatic Technical Distributor (and a self described “airhead”), this is just another example of how I apply my technical knowledge to engage SMC engineers to solve customer pneumatic applications.