Double acting cylinder - Area - question

[Liftoff]

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?

[adz600]

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.

[typhoon_driver]

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

[Liftoff]

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?

Double acting cylinder_01.jpg

[adz600]

Yes the force will increase

[Liftoff]

Yes the force will increase

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.

Double acting cylinder_02.jpg