Given that removing contaminants from the oil to extend hydraulic component life is the primary objective of filtration, it is a paradox for filters to be located where they reduce the service life of components they were installed to protect.

So when considering the possible locations for filters in a hydraulic system, the overarching principle should be: first, do no … Read more

Last week I had cause to study a machine’s technical manual. I’m not sure whether it was lack of care in the original authorship or in the translation from Japanese to English, but the text was riddled with errors, omissions and ambiguities. The information it contained was so confusing I had to read each section several times to make any … Read more

If you’ve been working with hydraulics for a while, you probably consider a hydraulic system with a variable displacement pump to be more efficient than its fixed displacement counterpart. As a generalization this is true but like most things in hydraulics, it depends. And in the case of a variable-displacement pump, it largely depends on the type of control used … Read more