The stable working of equipment relies on the “health heart”: Hydraulic Pumps. But how to keep the hydraulic pumps healthy and make your equipment have a longer life? This article will tell you how to properly install, maintain and troubleshoot the hydraulic pumps to help with your business.
1. How to Install Hydraulic Pumps?
Correctly installing the hydraulic pumps is the most critical step. Follow the 8 steps to install it easily.
Step 1: Safety Preparation
Before installing the hydraulic pump, you need to prepare goggles and gloves to avoid the potential danger during installation. Then, prepare all the tools that needed to install the hydraulic pumps like various wrenches, calibration tools, etc.
If you are not sure what tools to prepare, you can check the manual of the hydraulic pumps you received or ask the hydraulic pump manufacturer.
Step 2: Checking the Hydraulic Pumps
This step is still a preparation for hydraulic pumps. When you got the hydraulic pump packages. Please check if the hydraulic pumps are complete and undamaged. Because the hydraulic pump may be damaged due to uncertain factors such as collision during transportation. If this situation happens, please contact the manufacturer to change for a new one.
Step 3: Clean Up the Surface
Choose a flat surface to install a hydraulic pump, a surface with support will be better. Then clean the surface to keep it with no fluid and stains. A flat palace can keep the hydraulic pump working stable.
Step 4: Align Pump and Connecting Shaft
Using a ruler or laser alignment tool to keep the pump and connecting shaft one the same line. Usually, the error angle is less than 1° or eccentricity less than 1mm. Alignment of the hydraulic pump and connecting shaft can reduce the probability of pump parts to damage.
Step 5: Fix the Pump
This step you can follow the manual to do. It is not complex, just need to ensure the hydraulic pump can fix the flat surface tightly by bolts and nuts. The install point is to make sure the hydraulic pump will not loose easily during hydraulic system working.
Step 6: Connect the Hydraulic Hose
Connect the hydraulic pump with the hydraulic hose. You must make sure the inlet and outlet fluid ports are in the right sites, this is very necessary to the normal flowing of hydraulic fluid. At the same time, keep the fluid ports sealed to avoid fluid leakage.
Step 7: Inject Hydraulic Fluid
Follow the 6 steps you can easily finish the process of installing hydraulic pumps. Next, you need to check if it can work smoothly. Inject hydraulic fluid into the hydraulic oil tank. Typically, ⅔ fluid in the tank is enough. The last ⅓ space is used to heat dissipation.
Different temperature environments may need different viscosity types of fluid. You can follow the manufacturer’s suggestions for the specific fluid quantity and type.
Step 8: Start Up
The final step is to start up the system to check if the hydraulic pumps can work normally or not. Meanwhile, checking if there is fluid leak, gas leak or strange noises. If there is, you have to turn off the system to adjust the hydraulic pumps.
The steps above can meet the most installation situations. Different hydraulic pump models may have different install requirements, you can install your hydraulic pumps according to the install manual or install video provided by the manufacturer.
2. How to Maintain Hydraulic Pumps?
After installing the hydraulic pumps, the maintenance of hydraulic pumps is also a key work you need to do. We suggest 4 regular inspections to keep the stable working of hydraulic pumps.
2.1 Maintenance of Hydraulic Oil Tank
First, you need to check the situation of hydraulic oil regularly. If there is no fluid in the tank, remember to inject the new fluid. If the fluid is less than ⅓ of the tank may break down the hydraulic parts. Also, too much fluid does not mean a good thing. Spilled fluid may be attached with impurities that flow back to the hydraulic oil tank to make cavitation happen.
If you find there are impurities, unpleasant smell or discolor of fluid, pour the oil out for new fluid. At the same time, cleaning the inlet fluid port regularly. Any small problem in a hydraulic oil tank can lead to big losses.
2.2 Maintenance of Wear Situation
During the running of the hydraulic pump, it may cause some wear and tear unavoidable. Such as the seals, bearings, hydraulic hoes are accessories that are easily get to wear and tear.
You can check these accessories regularly to ensure they can work safely. If they are already worn out or even broken, don’t hesitate to replace them.
2.3 Maintenance of Fluid Filter
Hydraulic oil filters are also a place where problems always happen. A hydraulic oil filter is a “security checkpoint” used to filter the impurities in fluid to protect the pump from damage.
Because the impurities can prevent fluid flow smoothly and even cause system crashes, it is necessary to clean the oil filter element regularly. You can use a cleaning solvent to clean congested areas.
2.4 Maintenance of Hydraulic Hose
You should inspect whether the hydraulic hose can flow smoothly or not regularly.
If the hydraulic hose can not flow easily, check the placement of the hydraulic hose to see if it got bent or pressured, then put the hydraulic hose in a stretch position. If changing the position cannot solve the problem, then you will need to disassemble the filter to clean up the impurities to make hydraulic hose work.
Remember to inspect if there is fluid leaked from the hydraulic hose. If the hydraulic hose has broken or bubbles on the surface, change a new hydraulic hose immediately to avoid the potential danger.
Through the daily maintenance, you can extend the service life and save repair costs of hydraulic pumps.
3. How to Troubleshoot Hydraulic Pumps?
Here are some common faults and solutions you may meet while using the hydraulic pumps.
3.1 No Fluid Output
If you run the equipment for a while and find there is no sign of fluid running low. There are many internal or external factors to cause this problem.
The internal factors may be the high fluid viscosity, hose or filter blocked etc. You can through clean up the loose or filter, and replace old fluid with low viscosity oil these methods to solve the problem.
The external factors may be caused by the slow motor speed or pressured hydraulic hose. You can try to improve the motor speed to see if there is oil flowing from output. Also,try to adjust the hydraulic hose position to keep it softened.
3.2 Noise
Usually the noise is caused by the air pressure difference. You can use a vacuum gauge to test the fluid suction vacuum, thus confirming whether the air pressure is normal or not.
If the air pressure is under a normal range(usually less than 0.03 MPa), that means you can keep on using the hydraulic pumps safely. If the air pressure isn’t in the range of normal number, then you need to change a new hydraulic hose.
3.3 Fluid Temperature is Too High
During hot summer, the high temperature will cause the fluid temperature to rapidly rise when running the hydraulic pumps. Some people may think this is not a big problem because of the cooling machine. Actually, this situation is very easy to go wrong. As the fluid tank temperature increases, the air will separate from hydraulic fluid to make the saturated vapor pressure higher, then cavitation is more likely to happen.
If the high fluid temperature occurs in other seasons, there are three reasons that may cause this situation to happen. Pump body wear, cooling machine failure or long-term load work of hydraulic pump.
Pump body wear will decrease volumetric efficiency and produce a lot of heat energy. Generally speaking, if the gap between the hydraulic pump plunger and the cylinder is greater than 0.05mm will need to be changed to a new hydraulic pump body.
There is too much scale in the cooling machine If it doesn’t work. You can use the Specific cleaning agents to clean up the scale inside to make it back to running. After that, you need to check if the water flow is normal or not, usually the water flow is 2-3 times the hydraulic fluid flow.
About the long-term load work, you have to confirm the system pressure. The general pump pressure is 25-35 MPa. If the system pressure is too high and over 35 MPa, you must improve the hydraulic circuit to reduce the load work.
3.4 Unstable System Performance
There are many possibilities to cause system performance to be unstable. Such as dirty hydraulic oil tanks, not enough fluid, fluid pollution or air leak etc. These simple questions are easy to deal with. We suggest setting aside some time after start up to control the fluid temperature in the working status.
Conclusion
Correct installation, maintenance and troubleshooting can extend the Hydraulic pump durability. In the long-term, they can also save your repair costs. Target is a professional hydraulic system manufacturer. Please contact us if you still have other questions about the hydraulic pumps.
