I once had a customer call to request I visit them at their own customer’s site to help with a “breakdown.” I’m always down to help a customer, so I gladly paid a visit. Arriving on-site, many looming pieces of machinery greeted me in a heavy equipment yard. An excavator sat atop a float trailer […]
Designing with HPUs for mobile machinery
Mobile machinery design has its challenges, but it has many benefits as well. A hydraulic pump need not mount near a hydraulic reservoir, and in fact, could be many feet away. A pump may be near the transmission of the vehicle or at a PTO shaft near the truck’s front bumper. As well, valves and […]
Top 5 reasons to attend the 2020 IFPE show
Let me start with by saying I will not be attending the 2020 IFPE Show this March 10-14. When the show begins, I’ll just be returning from my trip to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. I will have been just married on the sunny beach to my beautiful soul mate, Caryes Allan. Three weeks out of […]
What makes mobile hydraulics different from industrial hydraulics?
The need for lower weight, size and costs mean that mobile machinery often sets the stage for power density improvements in fluid power. All hydraulic machinery should be similar in scope and design, one would think. After all, the point of fluid power is to transmit force. Why should any given mobile machine be vastly […]
How is electronic control of fluid power evolving?
Electrohydraulic or hydroelectric? It’s odd how similar those two compound words are, yet they’re obviously entirely different in meaning. Hydroelectric refers to the production of electricity by way of converting the potential kinetic energy found in conjoined bodies of water of varying height, into electrical energy used by everyone and their hamster. Electrohydraulic is the […]
Why are accumulators so scary?
By Josh Cosford Compared to many of you reading this, I am young in this industry, and as such, my fluid power career is sophomoric at best. Depending on your perspective, I am lucky (cursed) enough to experience the slow movement of time. Time does not fly for me, so the year 2006 seems a […]
2017 Canadian Fluid Power Association Annual General Meeting wrap-up
The Canadian Fluid Power Association strives to further the fluid power industry, and during 51 weeks of the year, we focus on education, market insight, fluid power careers and industry cooperation. But over a few days in the late spring, we mix it up with our peers in a mosaic of business, networking and straight […]
What is pressure compensation?
You’ve been around hydraulics a while, haven’t you? With that in mind, you probably take some things for granted. There is plenty of jargon in our industry, and it isn’t learned overnight. However, if you were like me, the term pressure compensation was difficult to grasp early in your hydraulic career. If you still don’t […]
What makes a quality hydraulic component?
If you’ve been around the hydraulic world for a while, you’ll have noticed there is a price discrepancy between various component manufacturers. Whether there is a correlation between price and quality is a discussion unto itself, but regardless, you can’t argue the price range is vast. Let’s assume for this missive that higher priced components […]
9 dumb mistakes people make when designing fluid power systems
Sometimes dumb is relative. Was Einstein dumb because he brushed off quantum entanglement as “spooky action at a distance?” He was wrong, of course, because two entangled subatomic particles can travel away from each other in opposite directions for a million years, and when one finally hits something, the other is immediately affected as well. […]
