Hand-held electro-pneumatic percussion machine with reduced vibration emission

Millions of hand-held percussion machines are used daily throughout industry. Every year, thousands of operators of these machines suffer from a variety of disorders caused by exposure to harmful vibration. The government is faced annually with compensation claims running into hundreds of thousands of pounds, but more importantly, the quality of life of these workers is of particular concern. The design of low-vibration hand-held percussion machine is a challenging and topical engineering problem that is addressed in the current study. One of the main sources of hazardous vibration of electro-pneumatic percussion machine is an impulsive pressure force developed within an air cushion and applied directly to the machine casing. The present study showed that an additional flexible element added to the driving piston of the electro-pneumatic hammer improves excitation performance, leading to an extension of acceleration time and a reduction in the intensity of impulses of pneumatic impacts thereby relieving load on the operator. [Continues.]