Introduction to the Future Development Trend of Electrical and Electrical Products such as Valves

With the continuous improvement of production automation, the application of pneumatic technology has expanded rapidly, the variety and specifications of pneumatic products have increased continuously, the performance and quality have improved continuously, and the market sales output value has increased steadily. The development trend of pneumatic products is mainly in the following aspects:
I. Miniaturization and Integration
Limited space requires miniaturization of aerodynamic components. Miniaturization is the main development trend. At present, the minimum cylinder diameter is only f2.5, and a switch is made. The solenoid valve has a width of only 10mm and an effective cross-section area of 5mm2. The pressure relief valve with interface F4 has also been developed. According to the survey, the demand for miniaturized components doubles approximately every five years.
Valve integration not only assembles several valves, but also maintains and works reliably.
2. Combination and Intelligence
The simplest combinations of components are cylinders with valves and switches. In material handling, the combination of cylinder, swing cylinder, pneumatic chuck and vacuum suction cup has been used; there is also a combination of moving small items, which is composed of two cylinders with guide according to X and Y axes respectively. It is also equipped with electromagnetic valves and programmable controllers. It has compact structure, small space occupation and adjustable stroke.
3. Precision
In order to make the positioning of the cylinder more precise, sensors and proportional valves are used to realize feedback control, and the positioning accuracy is up to 0.01mm.
In the aspect of cylinder precision, 0.3mm/s low-speed cylinder and 0.01N micro-load cylinder were also developed. In the treatment of gas source, the filter with 0.01mm filtration accuracy and 99.9999% filtration efficiency and the pressure relief valve with 0.001MPa sensitivity have been developed.
IV. High Speed
In order to improve productivity, the pace of automation is accelerating, and high-speed is an inevitable trend.
At present, the piston speed range of cylinder is 50-750mm/s. The piston speed of the cylinder is required to be increased to 5 m/s, up to 10 m/s. According to the survey, after five years, the demand for cylinders with speed of 2-5 m/s will increase by 2.5 times and that for cylinders with speed of more than 5 m/s will increase by 3 times. Correspondingly, the response speed of the valve will be increased from the current 1/100 second level to 1/1000 second level.
5. Oil-free, tasteless and aseptic
The requirement of human beings to the environment is getting higher and higher, so the oil-free pneumatic components will be popularized. There are also some special industries, such as food, beverage, pharmaceuticals, electronics and so on, which require more stringent air requirements. Besides oil-free, they also require odorless, sterile and so on. The filters with such special requirements will be continuously developed.
6. Long life, high reliability and self-diagnostic function
Valves with a life of 50 million times and cylinders with a life of 3000 km have been commercialized, but in textile machinery, a high-frequency valve requires a life of more than 100 million times, preferably up to 200 million times. This requirement, the existing elastic sealing valve is difficult to achieve, which makes the gap sealing elements regain importance. Numatics has a kind of air valve, which is sealed by clearance. After ventilation, the valve core is suspended in the valve body, forming friction-free movement, and self-dustproof function. The life of the valve can exceed 200 million times. Although it is an old product, it is worth learning from. Pneumatic components are mostly used in automatic production lines. The failure of components often affects the operation of the whole line. The sudden stop of the production line causes serious losses. Therefore, high requirements are put forward for the reliability of pneumatic components. The pneumatic components required by a chemical fibre company in Jiangsu are absolutely reliable within the set life, and they are replaced when they are due regardless of whether they can continue to be used or not. In this paper, the problem of life balance of all kinds of components, i. e. the so-called equal life design, is put forward. Sometimes in order to ensure the reliability of the work, we have to sacrifice the life index. Therefore, the self-diagnosis function of the pneumatic system has been put on the agenda. The components and systems with additional self-diagnosis functions such as predictive life are being developed. With the multi-function of mechanical devices, the number of wiring is increasing, not only increasing the workload of installation and maintenance, but also prone to failure, affecting the reliability of work. Therefore, the improvement of wiring system is also paid attention to by pneumatic components and system designers.
Energy saving and low power consumption
Energy conservation is a permanent issue for enterprises, and will be stipulated in the establishment of ISO14000 environmental protection system standards.
The low power consumption of pneumatic components is not only to save energy, but also to integrate with microelectronics technology. Power consumption of 0.5W solenoid valves has already been commercialized, 0.4W, 0.3W valves have been developed, which can be directly controlled by PC.
8. Mechatronics
In order to accurately achieve the pre-set control objectives (such as switch, speed, output force, position, etc.), closed-circuit feedback control should be adopted. The conversion between gas and electric signals becomes the key to realize closed-circuit control, and the proportional control valve can be the interface of this conversion. It is an important subject for the development of pneumatic technology to develop various forms of proportional control valves and electro-pneumatic proportional/servo systems in a long period of time, and to make them have good performance, reliable operation and low price.
At present, there are many application examples of proportional/servo system, such as precise positioning of cylinder, suspension system for vehicle to achieve good vibration reduction performance, automatic tilting device for cable car turning, robot serving patients, etc. How to make the above examples more practical and economical still needs to be further improved.
9. Meeting the Special Requirements of Certain Industries
In the fierce market competition, the development of special pneumatic components for the specific requirements of certain industries is an important aspect of market development. Every factory pays close attention to it. Recent developments in domestic pneumatic industry include special cylinders for aluminium industry (high temperature resistance, self-locking), special cylinders for railways (earthquake resistance, high reliability), and special air valves for rail lubrication (low temperature resistance, self-locking).