Hydraulic & Pneumatic Training books

[budt]

I notice several persons on this site mention they teach a Fluid Power class (Hydraulic and/or Pneumatic. I would like to take a survey on what text you use and what you like or don't like about that material.

Feedback from students would also be great here since I have always wondered what was the results of a 3 day, 1 week or even 2 week Fluid Power training class. Does it meet the needs of the students? Is it too long? Too short? Just about right? Practically useless? Do you return from a seminar and immediately start fixing all the hydraulic and pneumatic problems? Or, do you not get the opportunity to work on th equipment for 6 months and forget 90%of what you learned?

ALso, if you have used other material, why did you change to the present text.

Personally, I used Womack Industrial Machine "Industrial Fluid Power" Vol. 1 to start with and later, after starting work at a Vickers distributor, I added Vickers "Industrial Hydraulics Manual" to supplement the Womack book. Further down the path, When I learned more, I added passout material that finally totalled 120 pages so I could illustrate equipment and functions that were not fully covered or not covered at all in the aforementioned books.

At one companies request I was asked ot use the "Industrial Hydraulics Technology" manual by Parker and found it to be the least desirable of any I have used.

I am impressed with the quality of the Rexroth "Using Industrial Hydraulics" but only had one opportunity to use it.

My biggest problem with all the books is, they do exactly what I would do if I had a Fluid Power equipment manufacturing company, they use their companies equipment and if they don't have a particular piece of equipment it is usually not discussed in their training manual.

Is this a good topic? Does anyone else have a problem with the present day Fluid Power training situation? Should Fluid Power Training, Circuit Design and Trouble Shooting be handled by the Fluid Power manufacturer or their distributor? This inquisitive mind wants to know.


Bud Trinkel CFPE
HYDRA-PNEU CONSULTING, INC.
fluidpower1 @ hotmail.com

http://www.fluidpower1.us

 

[HCMechSys]

I've taught a course using the Parker Industrial Hydraulics Technology manual by Parker. I agree, its not the best written book I've seen.

The college where I teach the course has a number of the Parker training stations. I find the students learn alot just from putting together the circuits and playing around with things. The Parker lab manual has some decent lab activities. However, there are a couple of things with it - some of the questions in the lab exercises don't make alot of sense. The lab stations themselves don't have any way of loading either the cylinders or the hydraulic motor, so the students don't see the behaviour of the equipment under load. I realize this is for safety reasons, but it makes some of the activities (ex - counterbalance valve) awkward...

 

[HCMechSys]

I've recently purchased a copy of "Industrial Hydraulic Control", Peter Rohner.

It seems to be a pretty good text and not connected to any hydraulics manufacturer either (it is connected with the

http://www.hydraulicsupermarket.com

web site, though). It may be a little above my students in basic hydraulics, but it does cover everything I do - I'm thinking of recommending it as a textbook. It also starts getting into basic electrohydraulics...

You can see a summary of the book at:

http://www.industrialhydrauliccontrol.com/

 

[PNachtwey]

For an ADVANCED course for those that want to be hydraulic designers, I would recommend:

Hydraulic System Analysis by George R Keller. It has problems with the solutions at the back. It was first published in 1969 and was written for engineers at Boeing. The books say it can also be used as a one year course for third year technical students. I think it is in the fourth printing now. The physics of hydraulics hasn't changed much since then. I have a borrowed copy and have decided to buy my own.