Here is a challenge to everyone who reads this.

If you are convinced that fluid power technology is still a great design choice, then go out and tell others. Spread the word. We in the fluid power industry must continue to tout the virtues of our excellent technology to design engineers, maintenance personnel, installers, repair technicians, and everyone involved with machinery both industrial and mobile, including students.

Fluid power is still a great design choice and in many cases the best choice for powering today's machinery and equipment. What other technology exhibits the strength and accuracy to move something the size and mass of an automobile with a device no bigger than a soda can?

There are many exciting application stories involving fluid power technology that make possible various tasks that we take for granted. Post your stores about the incredible accomplishments of fluid power!

In order to promote the effectiveness and flexibility of fluid power, your interesting stories should appear in our monthly magazine, Hydraulics & Pneumatics, as well as on our website.

Post your stories here and submit them to our editors for publication in the magazine.

If you have an interesting story, just give us the lead and we will follow up.

Often, the best learning tool for technology isn the sharing of success stories. Give us the lead and we will follow up.

quote:

We in the fluid power industry must continue to tout the virtues of our excellent technology to design engineers, maintenance personnel, installers, repair technicians, and everyone involved with machinery both industrial and mobile, including students.

Mike;

The UnderWhelming Response to your request's of the last 4 months is typical of any discipline that uses Manufacturers and their personnel to design equipment, design the circuits that use their equipment and offer most of the training and training aids for their type of equipment.

I believe a response to a request like yours to the Electrical, Electronic or Mechanical field would be a million times better than you have seen.

Even the questions and responses to them on this and all the other Fluid Power Forums are less in 6 months than most Electrical or Mechanical forums see in a DAY.

Take a look at the PLCS.net forum:
http://www.plctalk.net/qanda/forumdisplay.php?s=7a2639f...5e9c80809f&forumid=2

to get an idea of the questions and feedback from a field of endeavor that has Trained and Dedicated persons applying and maintaining that equipment.

Also notice the strides the Electrical and Electronic field have made over the years and the antiquated equipment Fluid Power is using that came from the 30's and 40's and now has a different paint job.

Even in the publication world, notice the difference in the number of Electrical and Mechanical magazines in relation to the 2 Fluid Power offerings.

It seems to me there is something wrong with these pictures and as far as I can tell only a few are giving it any press.

Am I all wet or is there something wrong here?

When will there be Fluid Power Engineers?

When will there be Fluid Power Mechanics?

persons who are TRAINED and who only design or work on Fluid Power equipment and who will come up with new innovations that will move Fluid Power along like the Electrical field.

I have been asking this same question for 40 years so it is either a very bad question and/or everyone thinks the Status-Quo is satisfactory.

"When will there be Fluid Power Engineers?"
When it makes economic sense.

"When will there be Fluid Power Mechanics?"
I think this exists already at some universities. Fluid power should be part of the mechanical engineers bag of tricks to get power from point a to point b just like a drive shaft.

"persons who are TRAINED and who only design or work on Fluid Power equipment and who will come up with new innovations that will move Fluid Power along like the Electrical field."
I don't see it. My electrical circuit designers have learned a lot about hydraulics. I think that one must know how electrical, mechanical and hydraulic systems interact.

Note, the people on plcs.net have embraced electronic control. This has not happened in the hydraulic field except for a small percentage of people. These PLC people are controlling all sorts of systems. Temperature, chemical, motor, hydraulic, and mechanical are all controlled by PLCs. PLCs are involved with many fields. That is why there is so much activity on that forum.

Peter;

You exhibit the same thinking of most in the industrial world and in my thinking it has not and is not working.

However, I don't see a change in the works since most companies don't want a change and as you stated it has a lot to do with "ECONOMICS."

I marvel at statements like:

"These PLC people are controlling all sorts of systems. Temperature, chemical, motor, hydraulic, and mechanical are all controlled by PLCs. PLCs are involved with many fields."

This statement could be easily changed to "These FLUID POWER PEOPLE ARE POWERING all sorts of systems. Temperature, chemical, motor, hydraulic, and mechanical are all Powered by Fluid Power. Fluid Power is involved with many fields.

Well, maybe "Temperature" and "Hydraulic" should be left out.

AND:

"Note, the people on plcs.net have embraced electronic control. This has not happened in the hydraulic field except for a small percentage of people."


Maybe "embraced" could be changed to "Are trained in and only work on "Electrical or Electronic controls."

They may make the cycle of a Fluid Power system operate but have little knowledge of how the components operate. However, they could easily be trained in Fluid Power equipment operation and circuit design. In fact I find Electrical persons often are the ones who diagnose Fluid Power problems since they can prove a signal is going to a valve but the actuator that should move when that valve is energized does not move as planned.

I teach Industrial Fluid Power Basics to all the Electrical Apprentices at a local company and find they pick up Fluid Power easily since they can relate it to Electrical opearations and functions.

So far, I imagine you can tell, you have not convinced me that Fluid Power should not have trained persons who only work on and design Fluid Power circuits. I'm sure you have not given up hope though.

I personally favor a trend towards systems people, those that are adequately skilled at hydraulic/pneumatic systems, electrical systems, electronic systems and mechanical systems. I design and maintain systems routinely and use all of these skills on a regular basis.

All of these have places where they are a better fit than the other methods. There is no doubt that hydraulic components offer the best power to weight ratio for transmitting energy but quite often there are better control options available utilizing electronic or electrical control. Only a cross trained professional will see this though. Sometimes pure mechanical systems still make more sense than using hydraulics such as automotive transmissions for high speed vehicles. Only a well versed mechanical professional will see this.

Being a systems person is not really that much harder than being a specialist. One finds that systems are systems and only the units are different. Flow is flow no matter if it is electrons, oil or air. There are some physical possibilities existent for some media and not others like magnetic induction in electrical systems. These are a means to achieve a result with one system when it proves difficult with another.

At the design level I think there should be more collaboration across disciplines until more people are multi-skilled. Even at the service level there will be more benefit when the electrical tech is no longer pointing his finger at the hydraulic guy proclaiming "it must be a hydraulic problem in the valve" while the hydraulic guy is pointing his finger at the electric guy proclaiming "it must be a bad solenoid" when both become the same guy with no one to point the finger at but themselves.

"So far, I imagine you can tell, you have not convinced me that Fluid Power should not have trained persons who only work on and design Fluid Power circuits. I'm sure you have not given up hope though."
I am not trying to convince you. I just don't think the economics will justify it except for a large companies.

I think C1ay has a much better view but then it is similar to mine.

What bothers me is hydraulic people that design their system without any concern about how it will be controlled. Mechanical engineers that design things to be rugged without concern for the mass that must be moved also bother me. I don't like the the tech support calls I get when someone ask why the system doesn't move like they think it should. Too often by the time I get this call the system can't be changed and it can't be controlled right.

Why can't everyone calculate the steady state velocity of a pneumatic actuator? Why can't everyone see that it took more energy to pressurize the supply lines between the valves and the pneumatic cylinders than it takes to just move the load? What do you think of the pneumatic designer? What do you think I would say if I was asked to control it?

C1ay;

I find, in my geogaphical area that there are many Degreed Mechanical Engineers and many Degreed Electrical Engineers but no one with Fluid Power experience except Fluid Power Salesman or Ex-salesman.

Any circuit design that I do is for an M.E. that knows how to design the mechanical part of a machine and has an E.E. in the company who can design the control circuits from the Sequence of Operation I furnish. What they are looking for is how to get the motions with the most efficient use of HP that does'nt smoke, shake itself apart or give unsafe actions.

Also the Maintenance Department ask' for help when a Hydraulic or Pneumatic circuit quits working and they try all the things that worked before and the machine is still down. At other times they need help to replace obsolete parts or to change the circuit to make it work more reliably, efficiently or in a different cycle sequence.

These are not less inteligent persons, they are just not trained in Fluid Power. Most have had a 24, 36 or 40 hour basic hydraulic class 1 time or 5 times but they don't have the opportunity to work on Fluid Power equipment often enough to remember what they learned or be proficient at Fluid Power engineering or maintenance. You don't just walk up to a 2,500 Ton HPM Press that was built in the 50's and figure out why it is consistently shaking the building at the end of each 1,800 Ton pressing cycle when you don't know but 4 or 5 symbols on the "E" size schematic for it.

Also, who has the knowledge to figure out what is available to replace directional controls, relief valves and pumps that have not been manufactured since 1960.

You are fortunate to have the knowledge to work in all three areas that are found in most companies in the world, but you are the exception as far as I can tell from my limited working area.

Maybe you will have better results in getting people trained that will be able to do Mechanical, Electrical and Fluid Power engineering and maintenance than I have so far just trying to get Fluid Power persons.

I am willing to help in this endeavor any way I can until I get so senile that I can't remember what the problem is.

quote:

You are fortunate to have the knowledge to work in all three areas that are found in most companies in the world, but you are the exception as far as I can tell from my limited working area.

Maybe you will have better results in getting people trained that will be able to do Mechanical, Electrical and Fluid Power engineering and maintenance than I have so far just trying to get Fluid Power persons.

IMO, we need a separate degree program for fluid power than mechanical engineering. Industrial fluid power engineering, even mobile fluid power engineering, really needs a mixture of disciplines to maximize the benefit of systems integration. I really don't know how to affect this philosophy in the universities though.

I do think a possible starting point would be a requirement for MEs and EEs to each have some hours in their degree in other disciplines. Even if the ME doesn't get enough electrical training to function as an EE he/she should at least have a firm grasp on the areas where electrical control offers more flexibility than hydraulics where applicable. The EE should have a better grasp of mechanical systems and how one control vs another will lengthen or shorten the life of the system.

I don't think this idea is really new either. It goes on in medical training. There aren't really any heart surgeons, they are thoracic surgeons. When they transplant a heart they ususally transplant the lungs too since there are fewer vessels to cut and sew back together. Heart doctors are both heart doctors and respitory doctors. Two separate doctors, each trained in their own discipline could never understand all of the variables as well as the one doctor that understands both.

Another example that comes to mind is a position I had at a paver manufacturer. As an accomplished machinist myself I tended to design things differently than many of the others MEs because I designed them to be manufactured with an understanding of how they are manufactured. This caused quite a bit of friction between me and my unskilled manager that insisted it wasn't my job to worry about manufacturing engineering. He said if they can't build it then they should submit a request for a design change and after it goes back and forth it will settle down to an optimal design. I countered that they were still free to do so with my designs but I was just helping to reduce the number of times a design bounced back and forth. In the end I ended up working as both an mechanical and manufacturing engineer.

All in all I think most professions and degrees would benefit with a wider scope of discipline. Hopefully the internet will also give more people the power to expand their knowledge by making it more available. If all the world were more educated we'd all be better off.

"I do think a possible starting point would be a requirement for MEs and EEs to each have some hours in their degree in other disciplines."
The first two years of college are pretty much the same for all types of engineer. I had to take physics ( includes the physics of hydraulics ) statics, dynamics, and strength of materials. I also had to take thermodynamics, mass and heat transfer. I got my degree in EE and computer engineering. The big difference is the amount of math required. Most engineers only take one term of differential equations whereas nuclear, electrical and chemical engineers had two take two terms. Hydraulic engineers also need to take two terms because hydraulic systems can't be modeled without being able to solve a system of non-linear equations. That is the real block. Few people have the math skills to really understand hydraulics.

This is a great conversation. Let's keep it going.

>>Three people, WOW!!!!!!

True, Bud, but these forums are getting more and more traffic ... we are now averaging more than 600 page views per day on the forums, and 19,000 per month. So, there are certainly a lot of 'lurkers' out there who are at least interested enough to keep coming back and reading what we're saying.

So, yes, please keep the conversation going, it is important!

Greetings from Deutchland ...

-Paul

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Paul J. Heney,

Hydraulics knowledge? It seems sometimes you need to be a genious just to be able to post a reply on these sights! I posted a lengthy reply to this thread and then it would not post. I will try this and if it works then I'll try again!