I do agree that the big hydraulic manufacturers are hurting themselves by producing the same old stuff. Hydraulic specifications are not consistent or missing. It may be hard to find the inertia of a hydraulic motor or the proportional/compensator band of a pump. What is worse is that the manufacturers think they know what is best and don’t make proportional bands for pumps adjustable.

The average hydraulic designer needs a major upgrade. I can show so many cases where one needs to be able to solve a system of non-linear differential equations to model how a system will work. How many people do you know can do that or even know what I am talking about?

Visit a hydraulic forum. When ever someone mentions synchronizing actuator the first thing that is mentioned is a flow divider or maybe a gear motor. No one ever mentions hydraulic servo control. Hydraulic servo control costs too much but time and production wasted screwing around with a poor solution cost even more. I am amazed that hydraulic people still think they can compete with modern electric servo systems with their flow controls. It is like bringing a knife to a gun fight. I have no sympathy.

You guys should see a modern saw mill. There is very sophisticated hydraulic motion control going on there. We have sold our controller into press applications, robotic applications, 6DOF motion platforms. The hydraulic motion controller can doe the 6DOF inverse kinematics if there is someone to program it. I can, I know the math. If you don’t can’t do the math or physics then it makes no difference whether you are using motors or hydraulics.

We have customers that have replaced VFDs with hydraulics because hydraulics truly was the right way to do the application AND a good hydraulic controller was available.

Just because you don’t know about it doesn’t mean that good things aren’t happening. Perhaps there aren’t a enough good things happenings. I know that it is hard to get our customers to advertise their success stories because they see their success as a competitive advantage.

In the end hydraulics is just another way of getting power from one place to another like gears, belts, drive shafts, chains and sprockets etc. They are tools. It is the forever knowledge, the design and control techniques using physics and math that is important.

That situation has left an opening for disciplines with TRAINED/DEDICATED Engineers and Maintenance persons to make replacement equipment that is equal to or superior a lot of present day applied Fluid Power. Been talking about this lack of knowledge hole for years with almost no positive feedback from Fluid Power manujfacturers or users.

Fluid Power training is also on the back burner with 1–2 week seminars and those mainly by Fluid Power manufacturers training departments.

Bud Trinkel
HYDRA-PNEU Consulting
Ndewburgh, IN
http://www.hydraulicspneumatics.com/200/eBooks/

~Drew

I agree that automation knowledge (electric, pneumatic and hydraulic) is crucial for designers, mechanics and salespeople. But, significantly more emphasis will be placed on electric motion control in the very near term without major technological advancements in pneumatics and hydraulics which make the products more compact, more energy efficient and more user friendly. Fluid power components are going to have to be as equal as their electric competitors in component feedback and diagnostics. When I say feedback, I mean not just on/off, or extended/retracted. They’re going to have to tell the operating system how much electricity is being consumed; what the fluid flow rate, temperature, and pressure are at the valve; is the valve coil about to burn out; is there are short in the coil; and is there contamination in the valve that is causing operation failure among many other diagnostic information sets.

Without major technological advancements in fluid power and quickly, (5 years or less) they will be a bit player in the motion control actuation industry after being a major contributor for over 2000 years.