Published in Fluid Power Journal, July 2025
www.fluidpowerjournal.com
Today’s manufacturing industries rely heavily on fluid power systems to convert raw materials into usable products. Consistent and efficient handling of a large amount of energy by fluid power systems to facilitate manufacturing under close tolerances is key to success in today’s competitive market. Upkeep of fluid power systems is critical in not only achieving the world-class quality products needed by customers but also keeping the cost of production low and operating in an environmentally-friendly manner to ensure a value-added product offering with long-term sustainability.
During my professional career of more than three decades across the globe, I was privileged to gain experience in diverse industrial environments ranging from Heavy equipment manufacturing, Marine and Oil field refurbishment, Hot strip mill, and Plate mill to Aerospace, Defense, and Industrial manufacturing. In all these facilities, the fluid power components used were the same as HPUs, various control and servo valves, and a multitude of actuators, but the application and the attributes critical for the quality product differ vastly from industry to industry. Tandem rolling mills rely heavily on the fast response closed loop servo valve controls to ensure optimum automatic gauge control and proper tension maintained by Interstand loopers controlled by servo proportional valves to ensure uniform width across one mile long strip while expansion and collapse of Down Coiler Mandrel and accurate opening of the Wrapper Roll cylinders by careful execution of pressure and position control ensured a well-built “Hot Rolled Coil” coming out as the final product. As opposed to this, close die forging requires a slow and gradual build of tonnage by stepped loading of pumps and recipe-controlled tonnage control accomplishing velocity and pressure control followed by a ramped multistage decompression to dissipate thousands of tons of energy built during the forge process with a smooth ejection of the part. In one application simultaneous loading of pumps and fast response servo and proportional, closed-loop controls were critical while in another application slow but steady modular loading of pumps and accurate set points for opening and closing of control valves did the job. This was fascinating that how the same fluid power system but with different concept of controls were utilized to accomplish the goal. Though the basics of fluid power system design and maintenance best practices don’t change much on the macro level, for the fluid power engineers it is of utmost importance to understand the application and the desired attributes of the final product, so the fluid power systems are optimized at the micro level to perform at their peak efficiency and help deliver quality products year after year. Especially in the 3rd decade of the 21st century when every seminar and discussion forum revolves around the transition to Industry 5.0, a good understanding of fluid power systems for a specific manufacturing process is of utmost importance. After spending several decades in the North American Closed die forging Industry for Aerospace Manufacturing with two key players Ellwood and Wyman Gordon and working with numerous forging presses, there is no doubt that the optimization and upgrade of fluid power systems in the Closed Die Forging Industry is a journey and not the destination, continuously driven by ever-increasing aviation safety norms, Plant safety needs, sustainability, and cost considerations.
As we reach the first quarter of the 21st century, I am excited for the future of fluid power systems with the latest technologies like big data and cloud computing powered by AI-supported analytics, which has great potential to reshape the way fluid power is optimized and operated.
Coming to the Closed Die Forging Industry in North America, most of the large presses were built 40 -60 years ago. Over the years most of the Press Controls have been upgraded to some extent and even robotics and automation are being added while the basic fluid power systems remain the same. Introducing advanced manufacturing technologies and automation requires the functioning of fluid power systems at a much higher degree of accuracy and speed. Limit switches and proximity switches are replaced by position transducers and control relays are replaced by latest generation Processors. The needs connected with the automation call for evaluating the entire fluid power system and preparing the scope of upgrade that supports the automation needs. In some cases, Press upgrades provide the opportunity to add new, state-of-the-art fluid power systems equipped with the latest PDM sensors and servo-controlled pumps minimizing the need for proportional control and complex valves and controls at the manifold level. However, depending on the size of the fluid power system, replacing the entire system is not always cost-effective. In these cases, careful gap analysis of the existing legacy system and incorporation of various IoT PDM sensors such as vibration, temperature, current, differential pressure, Pressures, flow monitoring at the system level, and integrating data from these sensors to the CMMS (Computer Managed Maintenance System) can provide the alarms and flag needs for predictive maintenance thus freeing up the scarce maintenance team from route inspections to more productive jobs. With the advancement in AI, even systems can be taught to generate quick and accurate recommendations of corrective actions from the plethora of data that is time-consuming and quite complex for a reliability engineer. These technological advancements are geared to take RCM (Reliability Centered Maintenance) for Fluid power systems to the next level, optimizing their value-driven operation most cost-effectively. The possibilities are not only capped of improving the system performance but also utilizing the sensors in capturing the real-time critical data for the batch production such as tonnage, velocity, deformation time, and transfer times and using AI models to analyze the gaps between actual and desired value can help optimization via the real-time corrections, saving millions of dollars wasted in the form of non-conformances and scraps thus improving On Time Delivery to the customers.
Many modern CMMS systems offer Integration with Industrial control systems, HMI’s and SCADA to import valuable data from sensors, analyze them with AI powered systems and present them in the form of executable work order. In the time when many maintenance and operation workforce is about to retire in the coming years this type of Integration can be especially beneficial for the young workforce with limited experience.
While the road to automation and digitalization appears very lucrative and straightforward, we must foresee the implementation challenges and plan to navigate successfully through these potential obstructions. For instance, cybersecurity is a big deal in the Aerospace and Defense sectors and CMMS system providers must comply with the stringent security requirements of the industry while offering integration with Industrial control and automation systems through plant network. Another challenge is to increase awareness of the capability of digitization and AI-powered automation among Plant maintenance, operation, and reliability professionals so they can buy in the new technology and offer valuable suggestions during implantation making the ultimate product useful for the organization. Finally, A thorough analysis of the investment towards these automation projects and accurate estimation of resulting payback will help getting the project sponsored and supported by the management.
With Industry 5.0, we are in the crucial age of transformation, where digitization, cloud-based, and AI-powered technologies are no longer alien talk, but they are redefining the way future manufacturing will be carried out. It is imperative to leverage cutting-edge technologies to keep our business efficient and competitive. The challenge is how, we, the fluid power professionals adapt to these cutting-edge technologies and create a landscape that makes the best sense to our specific business needs and the market we cater to. The choice is ours, if we want to ride the wave and take our organizations and the Industry to new heights or be left behind, as some wise man said before “TIME AND TIDE WAIT FOR NO MAN”.
About the Author
Bishwajit Ranjan (PE, PMP, CFPS, CFPE, CMRP, MBA) is Director of Plant Services at Ellwood Texas Forge Houston. He is a licensed professional engineer, a certified reliability professional, and a Certified Fluid Power Engineer who has been serving the manufacturing for more than three decades across the globe. He can be reached at BRanjan@elwd.com.