Service and Repair of Hydraulic Cylinders

Regular hydraulic cylinder maintenance is important for your system's upkeep and efficiency.

Here are some of our best ideas for effective hydraulic cylinder maintenance.

1. Maintain the cleanliness of your hydraulic oil

Hydraulic oil pollution is the cause of many hydraulic failures. This is necessary to keep your system and parts safe. If hydraulic oil has become contaminated, it must be carefully cleaned as soon as possible. It's also a good idea to install high-efficiency filters and replace them as needed.

A differential pressure gauge can be fitted on a filter that has a build-up of debris to give you a good idea of when it needs to be changed. This implies you'll avoid a bypass, which occurs when oil travels through the system without being filtered.

2. Perform routine maintenance

It's critical to maintain your hydraulic cylinder on a regular basis if you want it to work at its best. Keep a watch out for any symptoms of corrosion, pitting, or wear on the cylinder rod. Corrosion can be caused by too much moisture, whether it comes from the air or the hydraulic fluid itself. Water contamination in the fluid can cause serious component or system failure; as a result, the oil should be completely cleaned as soon as feasible. Corrosion causes seals to wear out faster owing to increased friction; pitting has a similar effect.

Uneven wear within a cylinder is frequently caused by misalignment. Side loads that allow the rod to rub against one face of the bearing might cause premature wear of the bearing gaskets and rod. A re-chrome or polish to restore a corroded or damaged rod is generally all that is required for hydraulic cylinder maintenance here. Restoration is the best option if a cylinder rod is so far beyond repair. However, before reinstalling the replacement rod, you should fix the condition that caused the damage in the first place to save money on the new cylinder.

3. Alternate or rotate the cylinders

If downtime is not a choice, it is always a great way to keep another cylinder(s) on hand, either as an 'essential spare' or to alternate usage on a regular basis. Despite possible particle contamination and hard operating circumstances, this gap between usages preserves the cylinders in good condition. When these cylinders are withdrawn from the system, it's also a good idea to do maintenance on them so that they may be repaired if required.

Reinstall all of the seals before reassembling a cylinder. The status of the overall system can also be determined by inspecting the cylinders.

4. Keep your cylinder's accessories in good working order

Each component that composes your stainless steel hydraulic cylinder is equally significant. If a pivot pin or clevis is damaged or broken, the cylinder's joints may sag and play. Misalignment and wear, as well as more lasting damage, resulting from this.

*Critical spares analysis: - an examination of system-critical hydraulic components and suggested spares in order to determine which of your hydraulic components are most vulnerable to failure, as well as the implications for safety, production, and system performance and, perhaps more crucially, the costs and lead times associated with obtaining replacement parts.

Hydraulic cylinder repair comes in a variety of forms:

1. Piston seal

If the piston seal is deformed, corroded, or missing, it might become faulty, resulting in an enlarged barrel or bulging during operation. Replacing of the barrel or cylinder is necessary at this point. While replacing simply the piston seal and not the barrel is a faster form of repair, it is only a temporary solution. Later on, further maintenance would be required.

2. Sealing rod

Abnormal wear of the guide bush, or bending of the rod, might result in a deformed rod seal. As a result, the rod weight exerts pressure on the seal, leading it to fail. The remedy will only be temporary if you replace the rod seal without first diagnosing and correcting the underlying problems.

2. Rod

In most circumstances, the rod's chrome may be inspected, and if one side is shining and the other is dull, the rod is bent. When repairing the cylinder, it's important to make sure the rod is straight. Using a press, you can straighten bent rods.

While the hard-chrome plating can be protected during this procedure, if the chrome becomes corroded, it should either be re-chromed or the whole cylinder must be replaced. The performance and life span of rod seals are reduced when the chrome surface is damaged. If the rod has only tiny scratches, fine emery paper can be used to buff them away.

3. Piston

Pistons within the cylinders in light-duty applications are made of aluminum or cast iron and are in continual direct contact with the cylinder bore while in operation. As long as the conventional bore diameter does not exceed the piston's minimum diameter, minor scratching on the outermost layer of the piston poses no risk to the cylinder's performance. A micrometre is a handy instrument to use to examine the length.