The following story appears as it was sent to me by long-time ‘Planet Brendan’ inhabitant Rick Sosnowski, Boston Bar, BC Canada:

“Your troubleshooting method has saved two lives!

Years ago in one of your letters you said ‘check the simple things first and you may find the cause of the problem quickly.’ In my case my life depended on it. My story starts like this.

I’m sitting in one of our local grease pits eating lunch and this young man about 25 years old walks up to me and says, ‘Thank you for saving my life.’ I had no idea what he was talking about so he reminded me of a story I told him a year before in the same restaurant when he was passing through our town.… continue reading »

Hydraulic cylinders are almost as common as pumps and motors combined. So if you operate any hydraulic equipment, it’s likely that cylinder repair expense is a significant portion of its total operating cost.

According to some studies, up to 25% of mechanical equipment failures are failures of design. If we apply this to hydraulic cylinders, then as many as one in four hydraulic cylinders are not adequately designed for the application they’re operating in.

This doesn’t mean that the cylinder won’t do the job asked of it, it will – but not with an acceptable service life. So if you have a hydraulic cylinder that doesn’t last like it should, you may need to address one or more of the following issues:

#1.… continue reading »

According to an article in The Economist (03/03/18), management consultancy firm Bain predicts that, by 2030 American companies will invest as much as $8 trillion in automation and robotics. Bain predicts a large chunk of this investment will be in service industries, where robotic automation will replace human labor.

This is a remarkable feat of crystal ball gazing. $8 trillion is a huge number–just in America, and in the next 12 years. But even if it’s half that, this amounts to $4 trillion, still massive. And if hydraulics only accounts for 5% of this investment, the hydraulics biz will get a $200 billion boost over the next decade or so.… continue reading »