Converting an inverted hydraulic press into a light-duty forging press

[JHCC]

Cool. Did you get the tank locally?

[Frosty]

John: Put the filter on the RETURN line. Forget all the random advice. Filters go on the return line to catch any debris generated by the components in use. The only filters that go on the output side are for special applications.

I'm seeing a LOT of "helpful" advice, don't let the noise confuse you, this is really pretty simple. Feel free to contact me on the side, we can go through it step by step quietly.

Frosty The Lucky.

[jlpservicesinc]

Frosty,  if you know different then educate us all. 

I'm going from log splitters, manlifts and a Lull I've worked on. 

[Frosty]

I haven't said anything new in this thread until I realized I'd forgotten to tell John to flush the hydraulic system and tank when he made The Presscious. That was an unforgivable oversight on my part. I screwed up.

John is new at this and all the different advice is confusing him. What you said was correct Jennifer but a more dramatic repeat of what I'd JUST said.

If you have a question please feel free to ask. If I don't know I'll say so. Just because I worked with, on and built some darned complex hydraulic systems for more than 20 years hardly means I know everything and I have no problem admitting it. 

I did VERY LITTLE with Hydrostatic systems so I have more questions than answers with hydrostats. Don't ask me.

Frosty The Lucky.

[jlpservicesinc]

When it comes time to build my 60ton press I will be picking your brain for sure.

 

I only come to learn of the things i work on.

So it's not a lot.  Just notice the similarities.

Learning a ton about Grove Manlifts at the moment and interesting how they go about things.  

 

 

[JHCC]

I've ordered the filter, but will be holding off on changing the reservoir for the moment. As Frosty noted in our offline conversation, I'm not going to be using this as a full-time production machine, so heat buildup probably is not going to be an issue. We shall see.

[Fowllife]

6 hours ago, JHCC said:

Cool. Did you get the tank locally?

No. I ordered the tank, pump, filter, and all the fittings I needs at the same time from Surplus Center. I think I may have seen them locally at either Rural King or TSC, but I might be wrong. 

While I am not an “expert” in hydraulics, following are a couple picture of my setup for reference. As I already said, I have not really used it yet as it’s not done. It’s fast and will squish the crap out of a 2x4, but I don’t know how it will do on hot steel. 

The pictures might not be very clear, so the basic are - pressure line from the pump to the control valve, one line to each end of cylinder. Bypass line looped at exit of control valve with a tee for the return line. Return line runs to reservoir, then from reservoir to filter assembly and back to pump. 

[JHCC]

That's the one you got from HGR, right? Glad to see it kitted out so well.

[Frosty]

NICE build Fowllife!

Frosty The Lucky.

[Randy Griffin]

The filter should not be on the suction side of the pump. Pressure filter on the pressure side or return filter on the return line to the tank. Never restrict flow to your pump. You'll burn it up.

[Fowllife]

John - Yes, that's the one I got from HGR. I just need to do a little clean up on things and figure out the die holder and make some dies.

Frosty - I cant take credit for the build. John noticed this one at HGR  and I bought it, minus the pump, motor & tank. We will have to agree to disagree on the reservoir tank thing, which is fine. I'm guessing the fluid capacity of the system as is is probably only 1/2 gallon-1 gallon of fluid. With a 13 gpm pump that's 15-20 fluid cycles per minute. that just feel like a lot to me.

Mr Griffin -  Yes, technically you are correct. The plumbing was easier the way I did it, and in a closed system like this I'm not too worried. A pressure gauge as Jennifer mentions would solve this issue. I took a calculated risk, in an open system with more contamination potential I may install they filter before the tank. Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure even my farm tractors have the filters between the tank and the pump. They do have sensors with dumby lights in the cab though. 

[Frosty]

John: is that reservoir only 1/2 - 1 gal? If so you might want to keep a really close eye on the temp it might need something larger. 

I have to agree with Randy about putting filters in a pressure leg of the fluid circuit, nothing kills a hydraulic pump like cavitation.

Are you SURE the "filter" on the suction side of your farm tractor is a filter rather than a drier? Water is much easier to separate from hyd oil when the pressure is lower than ambient, even more so when the fluid is warmed up. Heck, the hotter the better. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[JHCC]

1 hour ago, Frosty said:

is that reservoir only 1/2 - 1 gal? 

Yes, here it is with a gallon milk jug. 

1 hour ago, Frosty said:

If so you might want to keep a really close eye on the temp it might need something larger.

Definitely will. In the mean time, I've wrapped some copper wire around the pipe that will go from the pump to the valve, to help radiate some of the heat:

And I'm probably going to add some aluminum fins to the reservoir as well.

[Fowllife]

5 hours ago, Frosty said:

Are you SURE the "filter" on the suction side of your farm tractor is a filter rather than a drier? Water is much easier to separate from hyd oil when the pressure is lower than ambient, even more so when the fluid is warmed up. Heck, the hotter the better. 

Yes, I am 100% sure they are filters, I have replaced them several times.  I have never heard of a hydraulic fluid dryer on any agricultural equipment. I also don’t really agree with “the hotter the better” Hot fluid  is rarely  a good thing, operating temperature yes, hot no.

I think the filter change interval is 100-300 hours per the manual depending on which tractor, or the skid loader I look at, and they are all between the tank and the pump. Heck, my little Ford tractor doesn’t even have a filter and the pump on that lasted 4500 hours before I had to rebuild. My old skid loader didn’t have a filter either (it was ancient though). My point is though, a filter somewhere on the return side is better then nothing, and it’s usually easier between the tank and pump. Change the filter after a few hours and as long as your hoses are not coming apart on the inside you should be fine for a LONG time. A little common sense goes a long ways.

Also, my filter assembly is rated for about twice my pump flow so even with a little obstruction l should not starve the pump. As I’ve though, I’m not an “expert”, I just know what has worked for the major manufacturers of the equipment I currently own and maintain. 

[JHCC]

Okay, I have a crazy question. You all see the reservoir in the picture above. If I were to slice off the end with the outlet (to the right in the photo), weld up a tank with a three-gallon capacity (say, a 9" cube) out of heavy sheet*, weld the outlet on the bottom and the rest of the existing reservoir on the top, that would give me a large enough reservoir without having to sink in a lot of cash. Since it's a low-pressure environment, I'd just have to make sure my welds were watertight.

Does this sound reasonable, or am I utterly insane?

 

* or even, to be really nuts, an old propane tank?

[Frosty]

I won't argue where the filters are on your tractors, I may get carried away but I try not to get stupid about it. I'm not always successful though.

Line drier is the wrong term we had water separators but the drills generated a lot of condensation when they cooled off at the end of the day. Milky fluid wasn't uncommon and the systems were designed to operate with a certain amount for a while. Then we had the system drained flushed and refilled, about 2 days steady work in the shop. The water separators took care of all but the worst and when the sight glass got about 1/4 water you opened the drain cock on the bottom. 

By hot, I didn't mean HOT, operating temp. Some systems run "warmer" than others, I shouldn't draw such close parallels to the systems I was so intimately familiar with. That's my bad, I need to keep from doing that or I won't be much help to anybody. 

I didn't realize what a tiny little tank was on that John, I've seen it a bunch of times and didn't recognize it. Once again this week I feel like a dunce. You'd have to reposition it to get a filter between it and the pump. Unless I'm missing something else I don't see anywhere else but the return line for a filter on this system.

Right now I don't know about welding up a larger tank. I think you'd be farther ahead to just buy weld fittings for the lines some things it just isn't worth trying to save a buck. 

Before you get too involved there is another cooling system that's as simple as it gets. Wrap the tank in one layer of burlap and rig a drip can to keep the burlap damp. Evaporation is a powerful cooling mechanism. Ever drive through the desert with cloth water bags hanging from the mirrors? The water in the bags was amazingly cool. Hmmm?

Jer

[JHCC]

5 hours ago, Frosty said:

I think you'd be farther ahead to just buy weld fittings for the lines

I’m not sure what you mean by this. Could you elaborate?

[JHCC]

6 hours ago, Frosty said:

You'd have to reposition it to get a filter between it and the pump. Unless I'm missing something else I don't see anywhere else but the return line for a filter on this system.

Here’s the space available, with the pump and the tank removed. The pump attaches to the bracket on the lower right, and I was planning to put the filter up next to the pump in the upper left corner. That leaves all the space in between for the reservoir. 

And just for giggles, here’s a propane tank stood up the approximate position where it (or another tank) could go:

[Frosty]

The below images are a few "Hydraulic Tank Weld Fittings" Parker has a huge selection on the shelf as does the Surplus center. 

Use a hole saw the fitting will pass through and rest on the weld flange. Tack and weld solid. I believe the center image is stainless, black iron or steel works plenty well. 

I most certainly would NOT adapt a propane tank as a hydraulic reservoir. How many years has Mike been talking about the waxy build up of mercaptan oil and how difficult it is to get off things you can get to. I can't imagine how much fun it'd be to clean out of an old propane tank. Chlorox only neutralizes the smell it doesn't clean out the gunk. 

Frosty The Lucky.

      

[JHCC]

Okay, I see what you mean about the fittings. Thanks.

I'm frankly not sure about the inadvisability of using the propane tank for a reservoir. I hear what you're saying about waxy mercaptan buildup, but as I recall, Mike's complaints were all about that buildup forming in burners, where you're working with a gaseous environment, not a liquid one. If there is a mercaptan buildup on the inside of the tank, and given that (as you say) it's really hard to remove, then is there any reason to believe that it would come off the tank into the hydraulic fluid in sufficient quantities to cause any problems? If it dissolves in hydraulic fluid, why don't we clean burners by soaking them in hydraulic fluid? And even if it does dissolve in the fluid, that's only a couple of cubic inches (at most) dissolved in five gallons; is that really going to be a problem?

 

(On a side note, if Walt Whitman had been a propane chemist, would he have written “O Captan! Mercaptan!”?)

[Frosty]

If you give it a try keep us in the loop please.

Frosty The Lucky.

[JHCC]

I think I will, and I’ll definitely keep y’all posted. 

[JHCC]

Filler/breather cap and weld flanges ordered from Surplus Center. The filter should be arriving early this week just came in the mail, so the next step is to figure out a support bracket for the tank and get that welded in before I do any more permanent assembly.

[JHCC]

Put in some good work on figuring out where to locate and how to mount the tank. First, I installed the pump rotated 180 degrees from its prior alignment, which enables me to run the line to the valve more out of the way:

Then welded up a bracket to go under the bottom of the tank:

Which bolts nicely onto the bottoms of the threaded rods holding the cylinder in place:

Holding the tank snugly up underneath the table top:

And leaving plenty of room for installing the filter on the upper right:

[JHCC]

21 hours ago, JHCC said:

Filler/breather cap and weld flanges ordered from Surplus Center.

Just realized that I had ordered the wrong size flanges (3/4" instead of 1/2"). Fortunately, SC hadn't yet shipped my order (although it was packaged and ready to go), so they were able to make the change in time. Whew!