How To Avoid Hydraulic Fluid Contamination

Hydraulic fluid contamination can create some major problems for your operation and machinery! It’s important to keep all of your machines and equipment running as smoothly as possible to avoid any unnecessary repair costs as well as to keep your machines running as long as possible. Hydraulic fluid contamination is one of the most common reasons for hydraulic systems to fail or lose effectiveness although you might not always realize it. Contamination can cause a multitude of problems for your equipment and machinery including leaks, sticky parts, corrosion and more. It’s obvious that machine and equipment owners are going to want to avoid hydraulic fluid contamination at all costs right, but how? What are some of the preventive measures you can take to keep your machinery and equipment running as smoothly as possible all while avoiding hydraulic fluid contamination?
First off, lets discuss what are the various contaminations that are most likely when it comes to your equipment’s hydraulic fluid. When you think about contaminants, its easy to jump to the thought of dirt, dust, flakes of metal, or other things that fly around in the use of machinery and equipment, and those things definitely will cause trouble if they get in your hydraulic fluid, but another lesser known contaminant is actually water! When water gets mixed in with your hydraulic fluid, the results can be devastating to your operation. Water can result in the corrosion of your equipment and hydraulics. Although contamination is sometimes unavoidable, let’s explore the different ways that you can protect your equipment from both particle contamination as well as fluid and water contamination.