Lubricating air cylinders in industrial equipment.

We've been building machines that use air cylinders for actuation. The air cylinders that we use are not oil-free cylinders with highly polished walls. They do need clean air and occasional lubrication. Lubrication is tricky, because the common type of mist lubricators can waste a lot of oil, and it also needs to be removed from the exhaust air. An injector that precisely meters and injects the oil at the point of application is more ideal.

These are just some notes from my research.


Pneumatic Air Preperation

Lubrication

Here's a good article about air lubrication: http://www.hydraulicspneumatics.com/200/TechZone/AirFiltersandFR/Article/False/21534/TechZone-AirFiltersandFR

Servoil Injection Lubrication: http://www.induser.nl/images/PDFmpitems/WhyServoil.pdf

Exhaust and oil removal

The way to remove the oil from the air when it gets exhausted is to use a Exhaust Coalescing Silencer. The thing I don't like about most of the designs, is that the oil collection container appears to be open to contamination and or spills. I wonder if using a coalescing filter prior to exhausting the air would also work?

Parker sells some here: https://www.parker.com/literature/Finite%20Filter/Literature%20PDFs/Finite_Mufflers_and_Silencers_1300_340.pdf

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