Two products, two completely different decision conversations. Rotary actuators turn pneumatic supply into bounded angular motion — the cheap, reliable answer for indexing, clamping, and rotating where the cycle only ever has two positions. Electric actuators are the migration path off pneumatic for precision-positioning work — multi-point profiles, closed-loop feedback, and energy that wins on TCO once cycle rate or positioning accuracy gets serious.
Tap any type to jump to its page. The Decision Guide further down asks three questions that funnel the spec to one of these.
Pneumatic rotary turns a shaft between two bounded positions; electric is the migration path off air for precision positioning.
Exactly two bounded positions → rotary-pneumatic. Three or more, or profiled motion, or sub-mm accuracy → electric, no exceptions.
SMC LEY swaps an existing cylinder at the same stroke and mounting — no machine rework, and air-loss savings pay back in 18-36 months.
The rotary-vs-electric call is rarely a technical tie. Get it wrong and the cycle never runs as drawn; get it right and the motion disappears.
Electric runs 3-5x installed cost and adds controller, power supply, and commissioning — it wins on TCO only on multi-shift, high-cycle duty.
Distributor-facing reading. The trade-off column is the one that closes the loop — every type buys something and gives something up. Knowing what each type costs you is how the right one gets on the quote without a callback.
Reading the brand bench column — the bar shows how many of SPC's tier slots (Industry Leader · Emerging · Economical · adjacent) carry an option at that product type. A deep bench means a price-driven and a spec-driven option both close cleanly; a narrow bench means the available brands map closely to the technical requirements and the comparison stops being a tier choice.
Draw a line from the customer's answer at the top to the type name at the bottom. This is the page distributors screenshot and send to a customer the day before a quote call — so the customer comes prepared with the answers, and the call is about the brand and the budget, not the basics.
This category sits on top of the explicit Electric Actuator Migration Sub-System story (per IA Model §Layer 6). The pneumatic-rotary vs electric-servo choice isn't a tie; it's a hand-off — pneumatic rotary is the right answer for bounded two-position rotation, and electric is the right answer for everything more complicated than that. The retrofit conversation (SMC LEY drop-in) is the door-opener for customers on existing cylinder installs who are tired of paying for compressed air the actuator only uses 10% of the time.
Pneumatic rotary is the cheap, reliable answer for two-position work. Electric is the migration path for everything that needs more than two positions — and it pays back faster than most customers expect.
If the customer answers most of these at the first call, the second call is the quote. If they can't answer any, the actuators are rarely the only spec gap — flag it and push for a site walk.
Actuation is where compressed air finally becomes machine work — the dense layer the rest of the system exists to feed. Everything upstream (air prep, distribution, control) is just preparation; this is where the air pushes, twists, and grips. Three motion modalities live here and each one needs a different family of hardware: cylinders deliver linear push-pull strokes, rotary and electric actuators deliver turning and precision-positioning motion, and vacuum end-effectors pick and place parts no gripper can touch. The Motion Control layer next door tunes and protects what these actuators do — metering their speed and catching them at end of stroke. Get the motion modality wrong and the machine cycle never works the way it was drawn; get it right and the cylinder, the actuator, and the suction cup disappear into the duty cycle and do their work for the next fifteen million strokes. This is the layer the customer's machine is actually built around — every other layer is there to make this one reliable.
The linear-motion workhorse — eight cylinder types covering push, pull, clamp, eject, lift, and feed in a straight line.
→Rotary motion and the electric-actuator migration path — when the cycle needs turn-and-hold or precision positioning instead of stroke.
Ejectors, suction cups, and vacuum sensors — the pick-and-place sub-system for parts no mechanical gripper can hold.
→Adjacent Motion Control layer — a cushion or external shock absorber catches the rotary actuator at end-of-rotation on high-cycle indexing duty.
→Tell us the end-use, the rough flow, and what climate the unit would sit in. We'll come back with a configured quote — the right type, the right tier, and the upstream gear the warranty assumes.
—. We reply within one business day with pricing, lead-time, and configured parts.
