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Space issues resolved with flat rodless cylinder

Suitable for tight spaces, = the DLGF pneumatic rodless cylinder from Festo offers the flattest profile currently available

Festo’s DLGF is a new rodless cylinder is designed to significantly reduce design time and cost in applications where space is at a premium.

Rodless pneumatic cylinders are typically used where mounting space is restricted. They eliminate the protuberance of the barrel of a standard pneumatic cylinder by coupling the internal piston within the cylinder barrel to the external carriage via an axial slot.

The piston and carriage run the whole length of the barrel, with the air pressure being retained by a seal running the entire length of the cylinder.



There is only a short ‘dead space’ at either end of the cylinder to accommodate the end caps and cushioning arrangement – saving nearly 50% of the length of a standard piston rod arrangement.

The DLGF rodless cylinder from Festo has been designed to further reduce the space envelope and lower costs with award-winning1 innovative design features. It is suitable for light to medium loads and features an ultra slim oval profile.

Available in stroke lengths of up to 1000mm, the DLGF is available with piston areas equivalent to diameters of 20, 25, 32 and 40mm. It is suitable for applications where installation space is at a premium, including pick-and place, small parts transfer and circuit board handling.

The DLGF offers PPS self-adjusting cushioning, ensuring optimal damping regardless of the mass being moved. This saves setup time and makes processes more reliable by eliminating excessive shock loadings and vibrations that can adversely affect machine performance and product reliability, as well as generating unnecessary noise.

Highly configurable, the Festo DLGF rodless cylinder includes integral mountings and interfaces to reduce design time and cost and improve reliability during operation

New sealing technology reduces air leakage, delivering lower operational costs and longer service life.

The DLGF saves designers a lot of time. It is highly configurable, providing a wide choice of supply port positions that enable piping to be routed out of the way, increasing mounting flexibility in tight spaces.

Shock absorbers can be specified or fitted later if required.

By considering the DLGF as part of a system rather than just as a standalone component, Festo has removed the need for mountings and interface blocks, eliminating the time and cost of designing and machining additional components.

Instead, the carriage provides an interface on the top for precision pneumatic slides such as the new Festo DGST – for use in an X-Z combination, for example – or for up to three compact cylinders on the side face.

In addition to reducing time and cost at the design stage, integral mountings like these increase accuracy and repeatability during operation and eliminate the mass and load offset of extra mounting plates, which can increase wear and shorten operating life.

Coupling two DLGF units together couldn’t be simpler: connect two cylinders to create a long-stroke gripper or use two cylinders of differing strokes for intermediate positioning applications, ie, for a 3-position traverse operation.

Specifiers and machine builders can quickly identify the best DLGF option for their application by inputting just four parameters into the Festo Product Configurator. A large range of standard models are available ex-stock to minimise lead-in times.

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