Minimize Hydraulic Equipment Downtime? Best Practices & Measurement Tools to Troubleshoot your Systems

When something goes wrong with equipment in the field, the good, fast and cheap option to get it back up and running doesn’t always exist.  Often troubleshooting is the most time consuming part of the process, and so here are key areas to consider:

1. Equipment Performance – identify the baseline for what equipment should be doing, and how the equipment is performing compared to that baseline
2. Equipment Location – difficulty communicating to the location where equipment is operating and/or ability to get a capable person on-site for troubleshooting/repairing
3. Location of Capable Personnel – is your crew cross-trained so if someone is unavailable you will still be covered with adequate knowledge?
4. Spare Parts – is there documentation of preferred vendors, agreements in place for access to parts?
5. Documentation of the System – are problems and the solution documented so you are able to learn best practices for future issues?

When we look at measurement tools, they can impact 4 of these 5 areas – they provide access to your system, measure versus baseline, allow you to more effectively cross-train your team and assist with documentation of the incident.

First, we look at access to your system with integrated test points. Integrated test points are fittings that allow you to connect under full pressure to measuring tools or conduct sampling without having to shut down your equipment. With the addition of the test point, the crew in the field can connect with a manual gauge or digital measurement system to get the necessary readings. 

So what tool should be used at the test point? Traditionally, field crews use manual gauges, but to minimize downtime, a digital measuring system can make it easier to read and transfer data, prevent human error when reading gauges, connect with OEM sensors, give access to CAN network on the equipment, and/or provide rapid sampling times (up to 10,000 per second) to catch pressure spikes or other quick changes to your system.

It is important to train your team on effectively using the digital measurement systems to ensure capable personnel.  Evaluating or implementing a process to conduct tests and record results improves knowledge for the future.  Learn more with a complimentary training webinar available from Hydraquip & Hydrotechnik or contact us to request an in-person demo of measurement systems.