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10 things we have learnt about snap couplings

How there are lots of good things about quick disconnects but a few bad.

Picture Above: A typical male and female quick disconnect pair from Snaptite/Parker

 Quick disconnects or “snap couplings” are indispensible for hydraulics professionals.

 Where would you use them?

 Either where you need to swap around hoses, cylinders, pumps and other components everyday or where you need to be able to swap out or modify a system easily in the longer term. You are just snapping together the male probe and female coupler to provide a quick and leak tight connection. You also need to prevent contamination entering a system.

 A few examples might be:

-You have a swaging tool using two Enerpac cylinders and need to swap between one and the other without using spanners. Fit quick disconnects and do the job in seconds. 

Why even if winter doesn’t challenge your viscosity of hydraulic oil, it still isn’t the best season for hydraulics.

Should the seasons of the years matter to a hydraulic system? That probably depends where you are in the world and what sort of state the system is in. Extreme temperatures like those in Siberia or Northern Canada will test systems to the limit both in their design and also their state of maintenance.

Because of the global market for hydraulic equipment and not always knowing where your OEM kit might end up, we thing extreme cold should always be on the designer’s agenda.

So at what temperature does oil freeze? If low temperature hydraulic fluid has not been used, you could well find that the ambient temperature is below the pour point of the oil and it is solid. The pour point is when the oil simply goes solid and won’t pour. Well before then, it will have become steadily more viscous, potentially allowing the system to not prime properly and be starved of lubrication.