Berendsen Fluid Power has expanded its hydraulic cylinder repair capabilities to accommodate the extra-large cylinders in use by the Australian crane industry.
The leading hydraulic services company has added new facilities including the largest, most advanced hard chrome plating tank to accommodate the longest hydraulic cylinders in existence.
It goes without saying that hydraulic cylinders are crucial to the safety and performance of every crane out there. As the largest point of failure they are regularly subjected to extreme loads while being vulnerable to damage, wear and improper maintenance. In other words your hydraulic cylinder is an achilles heel that will need to be rebuilt sooner or later during the course of its service life.
Big cranes however, mean bigger challenges for hydraulic cylinder repairs and until now, Australia’s hydraulic repair services have lacked facilities of sufficient scale to properly restore cylinders of such extreme length. Particularly when it comes to the all-important hard chrome resurfacing of piston rods up to 12 metres long.
The great news is that’s all changed because leading hydraulic services company Berendsen Fluid Power has invested to upscale and upgrade its capabilities to meet the needs of the crane industry. Including building Australia’s largest and most advanced hard chrome plating tank in order to achieve the highest quality resurfacing of piston rods up to 12 metres in length.
Berendsen Fluid Power is an established nationwide hydraulic services powerhouse, delivering on-demand support to industrial customers at scale across Australia. It is an expansive operation stretching across 11 branches in 5 states with a total of 18,000m2 workshop space equipped to handle large cylinders. The network boasts the largest stockholding of hydraulic components and comprehensive in-house capabilities including hard chrome plating, boring, honing and machining. Berendsen is also home to a world-class in-house engineering division & a state of the art manufacturing facility and together these are capable of producing custom hydraulic components and complete turnkey hydraulic systems.
“At Berendsen, the focus is on advancing our status as the most well-established and more rounded presence in hydraulic services across Australia,” says James Leach CEO of Berendsen Fluid Power.
“When it comes to hydraulic cylinder repairs for large, complex hydraulic cylinders at work on today’s cranes, we recognised the industry is underserved in this regard. In response, Berendsen has gone to extraordinary lengths to upscale and upgrade our capabilities,” says Leach.
“We’ve added bigger, better equipped repair centres, developed high-tech digital repair processes, and expanded our in-house capabilities including extensive hard chrome plating upgrades. We’ve also developed an extensive hydraulic cylinder knowledge base in order to provide the highest quality fast turnaround repair for crane owners and operators.”
Effective hydraulic cylinder repair is a highly technical process. There are many ways for hydraulic cylinders to fail including oil seal failure, cracked or ballooned barrels, bent piston rods, wear or damage to the hard chrome surface of piston rods and many others. When they fail they exhibit symptoms such as leaking hydraulic seals, sticking, juddering, overheating or in some cases will emit alarmingly loud banging noises. Whatever the symptom, the underlying issue needs to be determined. Usually, it isn’t as simple as just replacing a leaking seal. Fixing symptoms doesn’t lead to a long term repair and the cylinder will fail again quickly unless the underlying issue can be addressed – which takes the whole machine off the line again.
That’s why a strict repair process is required in order to ensure a high quality, high performance, long term repair. It includes cylinder stripping and assessment, including measurement, pre-test, NDT and failure analysis. Selecting & sourcing replacement parts & seals. Machining of new components Using CNC milling machines, lathes, boring and honing machines. Material reclamation using aluminium bronze overlay or submerged arc welding, hard chrome plating of piston rods. Reassembly, Testing, Painting & finishing.
While all steps in the repair process are important, none are more so than restoring a high quality hard chrome finish to hydraulic piston rods. After all, this surface is needed to ensure the proper functioning of the soft, vulnerable hydraulic seals that contain all that pressure within the cylinder. Yet achieving this is a lot more difficult than it sounds. Hard chrome plating is a very technical process involving several critical steps and any imperfections along the way can lead to poor quality chrome adhesion, mud cracking, dull or milky deposits and many other fatal issues.
Since this is the case the logical next question to ask is how do you restore a high quality hard chrome finish to the longest piston rods in existence? Berendsen answered this question by custom designing and building Australia’s longest 360-degree horizontal rotation chrome plating tank. It is the most advanced plating system engineered to deliver superior chrome deposit depth and concentricity for optimal service life of rods up to 12 metres.
The tank has many world-class innovations including a dual contact system, delivering optimal current density with ideal anode to cathode ratio for reduced contaminants and improved adhesion. The result is the only facility capable of achieving chrome deposit depths over 200 microns for rods of this extreme length – which is 4 times greater than average. This means only Berendsen can restore a hard chrome finish that lasts longer and performs better in the long run.
Hard chrome plating is only one aspect of end-to-end repair and all steps and activities during the process must be monitored and controlled at all times to ensure quality. For this reason, Berendsen developed a fully digital cloud-based hydraulic cylinder repair management system called Frontrunner. This system uses tablet computers to log and manage every stage of repair, ensuring adherence to repair procedures and streamlined repair processes to minimise costly downtime.
Because technical information is so important to technicians, Berendsen’s world class in-house engineering division has developed a library of detailed schematics for the hydraulic cylinders repaired. Through FrontRunner, this gives technicians access to accurate manufacturer’s specifications and answers about correct repair procedures.
Moreover, Berendsen’s capabilities go beyond routine repairs. In some cases, if customers wish to achieve extended service life, Berendsen can also design, test and manufacture upgraded components to maximise running hours.
“Our engineers are also capable of designing better performing components using sophisticated reliability simulation software, which are produced in our state-of-the art manufacturing facility in Newcastle,” says Leach.
All of this investment in upscaled and upgraded hydraulic cylinder repair capabilities is good news for Australia’s crane industry. For the first time, the industry has access to fully-optimised high tech digital repair, bigger, better-equipped workshops & in-house capabilities with upscaled hard chrome plating facilities, engineering knowhow & quality control. If your business depends on cranes operating at their peak day in day out, no one goes to greater lengths to ensure maximum uptime for your business.