Pneumatic Sequential Circuits

By
C.H . Chung, (Sales Manager) ; Ken Tam, (Sales
Manager) ; Gerald Liu, (Application Engineer); of
Festo Pneumatic, Hong Kong .

Pneumatic circuits for industrial applications tackled primitively, and, if necessary, separately,
can be designed in many ways but this article simply because of the non-existence of integrated
introduces the method of Pneumatic NAND and NOR gates for high pressure pneumatics
sequential circuits. up to the present . However, this does not apply to
flu id ics .

' Pneumatic counters are available in market . But they are

There are four different ways in designing pneumatic used as a 'flagging' device to terminate outputs rather than
circuits for industrial applications : synchronizing operations . Two hand safety valves are partly
synchronous .
(1) By intuition,
(2) Cascade method,
Example:
(3) Intuition/Cascade combinations, and
(4) Pneumatic sequential circuits . It is required to control the motions of 2 cylinders
A, B of a screen printing machine with the following
It is the last of the above four methods that is here motion diagram :
introduced .
Pneumatic control for screen printing machine
Pneumatic sequential circuits (PSC), both in high and
low pressure operations, differ from electronic Pos V1=0
No . 0 1 11 111 IV V
sequential circuits (ESC) in that :
(a) the desired outputs (o/p) of ESC can be
parallel or serial, depending on what is required, a.
L A
Front (+l
Rear (-)
Front(+)
but those of the PSC are almost always parallel B
Rear - (-)
and that
(b) the inputs (i/p), and therefore the entire Solution :
operation, of ESC can be controlled in synchronous
or asynchronous mode, while almost all pneumatic First, obtain the relations between the motion of the
circuits encountered by the writers up to the present cylinders A, B and the limit switches a0, a1, bO &
times are purely asynchronous*, and that b1 :-

(c) in designing pneumatic sequential circuits,

care must be taken in minimizing the number of
A
memory devices (4/2 way, 5/2 way valves etc.) owing
to their tremendous differences in cost compared to
that of electronic flip flops. This implies that B
pneumatic sequential circuits demand a more specific
consideration in design strategy beyond surface
workability of the system . In the example following AO B1 BO A1 131 BO
shortly, we will see how an operating cycle with 6
different states requires only one pneumatic flip a1 aO aO aO a1 a1
flop, and lastly, that
bO bO b1 bO bO b1
(d) the NAND and NOR implementations, and
hence the academic development in logic levels, in
the field of high pressure pneumatics are still at a
stage years behind those of electronics . Combinational
circuits as parts of PSC in high pressure operations
requiring NAND or NOR gates should therefore be Continued
Second, transpose such relations into a Karnaugh Fourthly, draw the logic circuit (logic plan) from the
diagram:- - pneumatic sequential equations derived above.

X X Logic plan for circuit diagram

QO
60
ST

Nomenclature :
X0
Jal A+ = A1

tol'o
by
A- = AO
b.
B+ = B1

B- = BO
Third, derive pneumatic sequential equations by S = Start
Karnaugh mapping on the Karnaugh diagram:
G = X
AO Start . bO . X
g = X
A1 bO . X
g = X
1311 a0-X+a1 X

BO a0-X+a1 .X

X1 a0 - b1 Example of logic plan and its translation into . a pneumatic

control system a) travel-step diagram, b) logic plan, c) circuit
XO a1 . b1 diagram

Lastly, the PSC is constructed accordingly :

Reference :
Werner Depert, Kurt Stoll, Pneumatic Control, An Introduc- use of compressed air, vol . 1, p . 111, Wurzbung, West
tion to the Principles, Festo Advisory Service for the efficient Germany, 1975 .
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29