Benchtop Hyrdaulic Press

It also is limited to 7" depth so you could press to the center of a 14" diameter circle. Normal press is 24" to 28" in the 12 ton size.

This press uses a "porta power" type cyl> Hello all.

That's not a big concern - I'm mostly going to be pressing suspension bushings and transmission bearings. So the load will be probably less than 5ton. 7" depth also is ok for me.

Do these porta-power cylinders not last as long? If it pukes out, do you think I could get another (better) cylinder as a replacement?

Dave

I grabbed an old article from Popular Mechanics once. It's such a clever design I always wanted to build it even though I already have a 20 ton floor press and a nice Dake 5 ton arbor press. I bet you could make it in a day and a half if you have a little welder. Have a look (biggish 6Mb+ download):

They seem decently made, and depending on your skills and equipment, repairable. You can certainly get the Enerpac original (which is what the clever Chinese have cloned here) cylinder from grainger.com, if you want to pay more than a whole nuther Chinee press.

Dunno about this unit, but one should generally derate HF hydraulics as much as half the force promised.

Hi Grant,

I grabbed your file awhile back and ended up tweaking the images a bit before printing (by the way,Thanks). If I remember right it was just two pages in your original pdf. If you want to grab/use these instead (they turned out pretty well and should load in any browser) you're welcome to. I'll leave them posted for a week or two. See:

(300 kb)