Many hydraulic power units still work with constant motor and pump speeds. Variable-speed pump drives would allow application designers to quickly realize energy savings of up to 70% at only slightly higher investment costs. But once in use, these higher investment costs would be paid back by reduced energy consumption in less than one year. In addition, hydraulic power units with variable speed drives generate less heat, reduce wear and consume less oil, which further increases the availability and reliability of your machines and systems. Our white paper on “Planning and operating hydraulic power units to provide greater energy efficiency“ contains background information, best practices and practical examples regarding the implementation of fluid control applications with variable speed drives.

 

A prerequisite for improving the productivity of pumps and hydraulic applications is the collection and evaluation of the relevant system data. Once you know the exact performance values of your application and how they change over time, you can identify vulnerabilities and wear of components. This data would put you in position to start developing rules and guidelines to perform predictive maintenance, which would prevent or at least notably reduce unplanned production interruptions. Eaton's end-to-end solution starts with the easy capture of all the relevant application data, from the valves all the way to the frequency-controlled drive. The data is automatically structured and forwarded for storage.

For data storage, Eaton offers the Predictive Maintenance Portal, which relies on the secure Microsoft Azure Cloud infrastructure and features a number of pre-integrated intuitive tools for the evaluation of your data. Fast and secure visualization is possible via mobile devices and access to different sub-sets of data can be offered to your partners and service providers. This makes it easy for you to run your business with better availability and more profitable based on secure digital information.

ATP Hydraulik from Switzerland designs and manufactures hydraulic systems and mechatronic solutions, including electronic controls and automation components. As part of the London Crossrail project, the company was awarded a contract to design and supply the cylinders, hydraulic power units, piping, electrical and hydraulic components, as well as the software for two tailor-made drilling rigs. In addition to all piping and cabling, ATP supplied the lubrication circuits, as well as the fire detection and extinguishing systems. The company decided to collaborate with Eaton on the mechatronic system, which integrates both, electrical and hydraulic components. By using only one manufacturer, ATP was able to offer the shortest possible development time. Cost savings were achieved by reducing the wiring time and the time for I/O testing and commissioning.

Pietro Carnaghi is an Italian manufacturer of high performance machine tools, such as large vertical lathes, milling machines and gantry systems. Main application fields are energy production, aerospace, mining equipment and earthmoving.

Pietro Carnagi wanted to reduce  the effort for assembling and commissioning the hydraulic power units and the costs and time of diagnosis and intervention. Read how Eaton supported Pietro Carnaghi.

Industrial hydraulic systems usually not only require the integration of electrical and hydraulic products, but also data capture and secure connectivity to external storage systems like cloud or edge systems. Solving all these tasks with an integrated solution from one partner facilitates and accelerates implementation and mitigates the risk of interface problems.

Our solution map highlights the connectivity options from the hydraulic device and sensor, through to the variable frequency drive integration and up to the storage and visualization of the data in the cloud.