Air powered wood splitter?
- Thread starter runningmike
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Air is compressible, thus when the going gets tough, the air in the cylinder/system would tend to compress- raising the pressure, etc. Liquids are relatively incompressible.
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Gooserider
Mod Emeritus
Air cylinder based units would be VERY dangerous as mentioned due to the compressibility of air...
They make some "air-over-hydraulic" where they essentially have an airmotor driving a hydraulic jack, typically very small units of the hand pumped jack sort, and the reports I've seen on them tend to be rather underwhelming... Slow, short life on the jack, etc.
There have been some people that have talked about using air hammer type units to split - such as a pavement jackhammer, but the general conclusion seemed to be that the weight and general clumsiness of the tool would make it of questionable value, not to mention the size and power requirements of the compressors needed to drive it.
The biggest problem is that compressed air is not going to be terribly efficient, it seems that you are far better off going from a gas or electric motor DIRECTLY to hydraulics or possibly an inertial type splitter rather than doing the intermediate step of compressing air in order to drive some other tool with it...
Gooserider
They make some "air-over-hydraulic" where they essentially have an airmotor driving a hydraulic jack, typically very small units of the hand pumped jack sort, and the reports I've seen on them tend to be rather underwhelming... Slow, short life on the jack, etc.
There have been some people that have talked about using air hammer type units to split - such as a pavement jackhammer, but the general conclusion seemed to be that the weight and general clumsiness of the tool would make it of questionable value, not to mention the size and power requirements of the compressors needed to drive it.
The biggest problem is that compressed air is not going to be terribly efficient, it seems that you are far better off going from a gas or electric motor DIRECTLY to hydraulics or possibly an inertial type splitter rather than doing the intermediate step of compressing air in order to drive some other tool with it...
Gooserider
I can't imagine using an pneumatic cylinder for a wood splitter. Pressure-pressure-more pressure-split-THWACK. Scary!
Air over hydraulics is different, but is still very inefficient.
Air over hydraulics is different, but is still very inefficient.
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