Double acting cylinder - Area - question

So, looks like I'm in need of a good brush up on my physics!

I just need a proof of concept for now which will need to evolve...so the issue is this :

A double acting cylinder will produce less force on the retract side due to the area reduced from the piston face by the piston rod, right? - the larger the rod diameter the less will the retract force will be.
Now I need to increase the force on the retract side without increasing the pressure, but at the same time I can't use a small dia rod as that might buckle. If I had to machine the rod and reduce the rod diameter at the piston face only, would that result in an increased retraction force?

Any ideas?

you could use a coil spring inside the cylinder on the rod side that would also reduce the acting force on the none rod side.

Spring is the obvious choice. Machining down the rod inside the cylinder will end up reducing the strength of it.

Ok, so lets for the moment say that a spring is not on the cards and that rod strength is not an issue (there are ways round that), in theory, just to prove a concept, if I reduced the diameter on part of the rod length at the piston face, will it result in more force? or will everything remain the same since I didn't reduce the diameter of whole rod length?

Does this drawing help to explain what I'm on about?

Attachment 6169

Yes the force will increase

Quote:

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Originally Posted by adz600

Yes the force will increase

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That's what I was hoping to hear:)
The below sketch is what I had in mind, using a heavy duty spring for a fliper, pneumatics for loading the spring only so no need for buffers etc. The only issue I found was that the size of cylinder I required was not going to be strong enough to compress the spring if I used an LP setup unless I reduced the rod diameter or went up to a higher pressure.

Attachment 6170