Efficient vacuum generator as compact version with integrated silencer

Across the indus­try, vac­u­um gen­er­a­tion finds a wide vari­ety of appli­ca­tions: from pack­ag­ing and pal­letiz­ing, to mate­r­i­al han­dling and auto­mat­ic assem­bly, to auto­mat­ed trans­port and pick-and-place. Here, process engi­neers face the chal­lenge of achiev­ing a small and light­weight machine design with­out sac­ri­fic­ing per­for­mance. To meet these high demands, SMC has now fur­ther devel­oped its ZH‑A series vac­u­um gen­er­a­tor as a com­pact ver­sion. Thanks to a reduc­tion in over­all vol­ume, this is a true light­weight and still has a larg­er total vol­ume flow — ide­al for use in mobile han­dling applications.

Whether in the semi­con­duc­tor, elec­tri­cal, auto­mo­tive or food indus­tries, in life sci­ence as well as a wide range of man­u­fac­tur­ing and assem­bly equip­ment: Vac­u­um gen­er­a­tors are part of the indis­pens­able stan­dard reper­toire for a wide vari­ety of appli­ca­tions — and must meet grow­ing demands. To this end, SMC, the spe­cial­ist in pneu­mat­ic and elec­tri­cal automa­tion, has devel­oped a com­pact ver­sion of its vac­u­um gen­er­a­tors. This pro­vides process engi­neers with a solu­tion that allows them to achieve an even more com­pact machine design while offer­ing high per­for­mance with easy instal­la­tion and main­te­nance. A par­tic­u­lar advan­tage is that the reduc­tion in weight improves effi­cien­cy, as robots, for exam­ple, can per­form faster move­ments with­out com­pro­mis­ing process reliability.

Small on the outside, powerful on the inside

SMC engi­neers have put the ZH‑A series vac­u­um gen­er­a­tor on a diet, cre­at­ing a com­pact ver­sion. By reduc­ing the con­nec­tion height by up to 20% (-4.6 mm) and the total vol­ume by up to 39% (-14.1 cm³), it is not only sig­nif­i­cant­ly more com­pact, enabling small­er and more cost-effec­tive machine designs. The weight has also been reduced by up to 59% (-19.4 g) com­pared with its pre­de­ces­sor. This is now only between 28.7 g (1.5 mm noz­zle Ø) and 46.4 g (1.8 mm noz­zle Ø). Over­all, this means that more out­put can be placed on the same area, which reduces the CO2 foot­print and invest­ment costs. On the oth­er hand, faster cycle times can be real­ized thanks to the low­er moment of iner­tia, which increas­es the out­put quantity.

At the same time, SMC has not skimped on per­for­mance: for exam­ple, the max­i­mum achiev­able vac­u­um is ‑90 kPa and the max­i­mum suc­tion vol­ume flow, depend­ing on the noz­zle size, is 78 l/m (1.5 mm noz­zle Ø),128 l/min (1.8 mm noz­zle Ø) and 155 l/min (2.0 mm noz­zle Ø) — an increase of 11% for the small­est noz­zle size com­pared to its pre­de­ces­sor. This enables faster evac­u­a­tion when han­dling work­pieces while at the same time increas­ing reli­a­bil­i­ty and again short­en­ing cycle times. An inte­grat­ed silencer also ensures that vent­ing noise is reduced, thus improv­ing work safety.

Flexible installation and easy to distinguish

The com­pact ver­sion prod­uct is easy to install on dif­fer­ent machine designs thanks to three mount­ing options: Process engi­neers can choose between direct mount­ing, mount­ing with L‑fastener or DIN rail mount­ing. The same applies to the con­nec­tion either as a plug-in con­nec­tion or screw con­nec­tion (G-/Rc-/NPT-thread) or as a com­bi­na­tion between the two con­nec­tion options.

In order to also com­ply with the Poka Yoke prin­ci­ple, the pres­sure ring has a col­or cod­ing that imme­di­ate­ly dis­tin­guish­es between met­ric sizes (light gray) and inch sizes (orange). This not only makes it easy to iden­ti­fy the prod­uct, but also com­plies with the spec­i­fi­ca­tions of the US mar­ket, for exam­ple. Since the bore spac­ing for fas­ten­ers is the same as for the pre­de­ces­sor, the com­pact ver­sion of the series can be replaced with­out any prob­lems — so noth­ing stands in the way of a machine update.