Over the years, there has been a surge in the number of hydraulic systems used in the automation industry, as it has helped streamline productivity.
Even a small downtime can cost you much. So it is important to keep your hydraulic system running. A pre-configured hydraulic power unit designed efficiently to fit your system can still fail under some circumstances.
This is because some Hydraulic Power Units are designed for aggressive work environments and so they require heavy power supply, and thus the pre-configured solutions cannot support them. So this marks the importance of using custom hydraulic power units.
So what are they?
The hydraulic power unit, also called HPU, is a source of fluid flow and pressure capability responsible for driving the entire hydraulic system. In simple terms, the hydraulic system’s main power source is an HPU.
The main components of hydraulic power unit include:
- Motor: This turns mechanical energy into hydraulic energy
- Hydraulic Pump: Helps in generating hydraulic flow and pressure capability to the hydraulic system
- Fluid Reservoir: This holds hydraulic fluid used by the pump and displacement of cylinders
- Valving: This helps regulate the fluid direction and the pressure required to perform the hydraulic tasks.
Benefits
Here is the list of some benefits of custom hydraulic power unit:
Portability
Another advantage of custom-designed HPUs is mobility, i.e., moving the Electric Hydraulic Pump & HPU wherever needed. For example, Portable HPUs can be configured to be used on a wheeled cart, vehicle-mounted or skid mounted.
Some HPU units can be designed to be remote-controlled, either wireless or wired. Also, you can operate it from your tablet or smartphone. So you can take the HPU to any place without hassle.
Choosing a Power Source
When using a custom hydraulic power unit, you get the freedom to choose the power source, either gas, electric, or diesel. Electric motors are highly preferred for industrial applications with access to AC power in many cases.
At the same time, diesel or gasoline is used for mobile applications where power is not available to operate electric motors.
Designing HPUs for Challenging Situations
HPUs can be custom-designed based on their working environment. For example, floor space may be at a premium in some situations, so it becomes necessary to design an HPU with dimensional constraints.
By designing a customized HPU, you can solve the challenges of accessing the air, power, or water.
Custom Size
With custom size, you get the advantage of choosing a reservoir of your size. So you need not settle for something smaller or larger than your actual requirement. This is a major advantage because some HPUs don’t need large tanks, whereas some designs require small ones.
Also, you might have large tanks in some cases, and finding pre-configured HPUs for drive requirements is pretty hard to find. But with custom design, this is possible. The same applies to custom shapes; your HPUs can be designed to make the most out of the available space.
The Inclusion of Special Features
An abundance of special features can be added to a custom HPU and Hydraulic tools, including, to perform various functions. That includes predictive maintenance, application-specific pain solutions, solenoid or manual control valves, predictive maintenance, repetitive DC backups for AC-powered HPUs, hand pumps, and multistage pumps. So adding special features can improve the performance for many folds.
Overall, the pre-designed and configured power units may not meet the design requirements. So by having a custom unit that fits perfectly into the limited amount of floor space or works according to your constrained environment, you can get more flexibility to work and benefit from hydraulic systems.