Making a door assembly table

[Ronald Blue]

Not an endorsement of any sort and just food for thought. Look at air cylinders on Amazon. As far as valves there are many options. For your application a manual toggle valve would be sufficient. Unless you want automation it isn't necessary. You could have a shuttle valve that wouldn't allow you to apply the one set of clamps before the other set if you desired. Look at push lok air fittings and air line. Fastenal used to carry some of these. If you want to see what you are buying. They make it extremely easy to change plumbing around and experiment. Single action spring return would work unless the clamping assembly is to heavy for the spring return. Posted some links for you to ponder. Several good suggestions here by others as well so lot's to ponder.

https://www.amazon.com/push-lock-air...k+air+fittings

https://www.surpluscenter.com/Air-Pn...ers/?page_no=2

https://www.surpluscenter.com/Air-Pn...der-4-9058.axd

https://www.surpluscenter.com/Air-Pn...al-Air-Valves/

[Bobby Robbinett]

I am getting ready to start on this project. Anyone came up with a way to mount the air cylinders in the dog holes on a Ritter style table? I saw a guy on Facebook make a DIY door assembly table setup like a Ritter clone made out of melamine. He built his table like mine with 3/4” dog holes. He made a foot/cradle for each clamp out of wood with HDPE round studs to mount the clamps in any of the 3/4” dog holes and he used a lathe to turn the HDPE to the proper diameter and then secured those to the bottom of the wood cradle that he built for each cylinder clamp.

[Tom Bender]

Ok that pneumatic circuit is a start but it needs more stuff added.

Clamping force - You are going to want a pressure regulator somewhere and maybe more than one. You may want different force on rails and stiles.

Clamp retraction, are these spring return cylinders? if not you will need to switch the pressure to the other end of the cylinders and vent the push side.

Shut off - You definitely want a lockable shutoff valve prior to any other components, preferably a self venting safety valve designed for the purpose.

Flow controls - yes you probably should have one on each port on each cylinder.

Special uses - If you will ever want to close less than all clamps you will want manual valves on those cylinders. Also useful if you want to close in sequence.