Been thinking one of those hydraulic double acting, hollow rams would come in handy around the shop. Can anyone recommend a good tonnage rating and stroke for working on small to medium size heavy equipment. Use would be for installing and removing bushings, pullers etc. I know they are expensive, don't want to buy the wrong one, either too bulky to use, not enough push/pull or not enough stroke. Just want to get a feel for what most of you find is a good size.
Just thought I would ask why you are interested in the double acting cylinders??? I have about 10 or so cylinders hollow and solid that I use weekly, about half of them are double acting the rest are spring return, the double acting ones are a pain having to pump them back in, they cost a good bit more but offer no real benefit on any task that I have ever done, I have been using this style of equipment for about 40 years now so my advice to you is use single line cylinders and dont waste your coins, my hollow cylinders range from 23 ton to 100 ton, I also have cylinders for sprocket/track pin pushing ranging from 70ton to my latest toy 164 ton they are double acting and need this function to pull on the tooling to install sprockets, this is the only use I have for double acting cylinders, if I was looking to sort a handy sized cylinder for a workshop it would be 1 cylinder at around 25/30 ton and 1 cylinder at 60 tons both single acting with a 12 foot hose and 10'000psi 2 speed pump. tctractors
I agree with everything TC said (thanks for saving me the typing). I mostly work on stuff in the class of 20 ton hoes and down, but very little mini stuff. I use a thirty ton cylinder most often, and borrow my cousin's 60 very seldom.
thanks for your thoughts so far. The reason I wanted double acting was I wanted to be able to do anything with the cylinder, including sprockets. At present I have a 320 cat exc. and a 450 jd dozer. Future would probably see a d6 dozer or larger, d8 is the largest I would consider and maybe a 30 tonne class exc. Anybody have an opinion on what length of stroke should I look for? Recommend a brand? Enerpac is usually what I most commonly see around here.
norite, to work on rim pull/push jobs on D6-8 you will need the correct service press gear using a 100ton cylinder, double acting hollow cylinders are not needed for any job on CAT iron, just single acting hollow cylinders will do all the other tasks, sadly you are in the wrong part of the world from me as I do have a fair mountain of this tooling and cylinders that I realy could get rid of, in the thread I post stuff up you will see me pulling down a few CAT F/Drives, I would average about 1 sprocket push/pull a month, I chucked in the scrap bin some tooling for Fiat FL10's etc the other day as I have never used it once in 25 years (another waste of coins) so forget needing a double acting hollow cylinder as their is no use for a 2 line ram, off the pump you only connect the 1 line to the spring return cylinder, for the sprocket work you will need the 2 lines and a 100 ton service ram plus a heap of tooling, legs feet pins adaptors etc and the knowledge of how to tackle this style of work, things happen fast when pulling off a rim so you need to double check your tooling before you make any tonnage on the cylinder, I often have the machine owner stood by the tractor when I pull a sprocket distracting me, so I always double check my work before I pile on the "Beans"
I've got both single and double acting cylinders both solid and hollow, my 30 tons are the most widely used the 60 ton's require help to handle them, I'll agree with most everything said so far, but that stated, I prefer my double acting cylinders better than the single acting one's, might be personal preference, but I'll grab the double acting ones first every time. As for what to buy, shop used in good condition and when you ask the best size, there isn't one, if you had a few the same rating, it would never be the right length for every job anyhow. I know why your asking the question you did, but there is no silver bullet so to speak, just keep buying them as you need them, if you go about buying one in hopes of it working for many applications, that's not quite how it works for me anyhow, that's what all the tooling is for, different length pipes, shafts and etc to make it all work is essential in my opinion. To answer your question on brand, this is a somewhat delicate issue, I personally feel none of them are any good, they all leak and are mass produced to compete with the cheap imports and quality has gone down so much in recent years, the standby of one brand being the best isn't the case anymore in my opinion. I'd chat with your local cylinder repair shop and since they are going to be the one's to fix whatever you buy anyhow, get their opinion and input and start there, different shops have different opinions and its not going to do you any good to buy something that nobody in your area can fix.
norite, if you get 1 cylinder with around 30ton capacity and a rod stoke of around 4" (100mm) and another cylinder with 60 ton capacity and 2" (50mm) stroke you with have something for most events, as I have said 2 line cylinders are just not needed as nothing gets sucked in ??? and often the extra pipe work causes aggro, the near double the cost of 2 line cylinders is just a waste of cash as spring return or push back units will do everything easily, I have never found a 2 line hollow ram to work any better than a single style cylinder, Enerpac are at the top on quality and parts/service back up they would be hard to beat on this type of tooling, dont stand in front of things when you start poking up the pressure. tctractors
Glad I asked here, lots of good advice so far. Don't need one at the present, I was just thinking ahead. I will be looking at buying used equipment, here they come up for sale rarely and are still expensive so I thought it best to start looking now. I wouldn't want to buy new unless the situation required the equipment immediately. Sadly there is no perfect stroke/tonnage, I guess I was looking for the "silver bullet", thanks to your comments I realize I'll need several eventually. Really appreciate everyone's advice when I am looking to spend a lot of cash on something I will hopefully rarely need to use.