Its difficult to explain the design without a drawing, sorry. It is actually hollow all the way through, rod and piston is bored out. Similar to a telescopic design only with one extension. It sits on the floor like a bottle jack and moves PM compaction tooling up and down. Time does not permit me to verbally describe the full design, even if I could, just take my word for it on the areas, they are accurate per our technical drawings.
Kcj, I mean that I have higher back pressure on the piston cap end during down stroke. I need net stripping force, down force. In my case case rod retracting force. Back pressure on the piston side during the retract takes away net force. For example, during a retract, if I have a reading of 1500psi on the rod side, I get 750psi on the piston cap. Using the area figures I gave earlier you can see what I end up with compared to what it could output. Ideally I'd like the full 18Ton output but naturally like you said backpressure is needed for control. If I cut this backpressure in half I go from 1.4Tons to 10Tons net force.