HydroSwing Door Troubleshooting

I have a friend here at the airport who has a HydroSwing door and it keeps creeping open. I slid in last night and closed it and all was good but this morning it has crept open again. HydroSwing phones are disconnected and emails come back as undeliverable. Does anyone have any experience with these, a trouble shooting guide, schematic etc.? It has to be an internal leak somewhere but I don't want to start sme major disassembly without some kind of data.

Wind against a leaky check valve???

No wind, internally leaking I think.

Are these double-acting cylinders? Do you have a hydraulic schematic? Does it also leak down when it's open?

I have the same door and years ago mine did the same. They sent me a new part and it turned out to be a broken o ring. I’ll take a picture tomorrow if you think it would help. Larry v

Please. Much appreciated.

moneyburner said:

Are these double-acting cylinders? Do you have a hydraulic schematic? Does it also leak down when it's open?

Click to expand...

No schematic, would like to find one. Takes over night to leak, didn't leave it open that long.

I have two, and about once or twice a year I will notice one has crept open a hair. Only the same one, and it's so minor, so rare and such a small amount of opening, I, being in the crane business and loath to have anything to do with hydraulic fluid if at all possible, ignore it.

I did have an issue a few weeks ago, in a rare for my area power outage, I really needed to open the shop's door to get my rig out to go to work. Not having a 240 VAC genset,my options were limited. I used my tractor's front end loader, rigged to the outside truss, and by just cracking ONE hose connection (lower end of the door's cylinder, just one as they are inter connected) and losing maybe a tablespoon of hyd fluid (easily captured in a container, not a mess) with the pressure relieved, the tractor was able to lift the door enough for me to get to work. Any future issues with your door, would be resolved by your local hydraulic shop, it is all generic type components, readily available etc.

Cap the hoses at the valve. If it still leaks, it's a bad seal in the cylinder. If not, it should be in the valve.

Web

Steve
There was one here in Maine doing the same thing. Will the door hang strait down closed with no pressure on the lines? I cant remember what the cause was on this one, but it somehow had pressure on the lines that cracked open the door a few inches when you left it. Ill find out the reason

jim

HydroSwing went bankrupt a few years ago, they left me hanging for the full price deposit I had on a door. Got notice last fall that I would be getting none of the money back, turned out a foreign investor had bought and stripped the company of all of it's assets, leaving the vendors and customers holding the bag.

http://hydroswing-hydraulic-doors.com/pdfs/hydroswing-hydraulic-door-install-manual-uk-2015-v1.pdf

It could be a cylinder leaking but I have seen the solenoid shown in fig. 70# of link above be the trouble
Doug

wireweinie said:

Cap the hoses at the valve. If it still leaks, it's a bad seal in the cylinder. If not, it should be in the valve.

Web

Click to expand...

I suspect there is a load holding valve that keeps the door from falling in case of a hose or valve failure. It would either be solenoid operated (so it works with the control valve) or set to open when a pressure value is reached. It effectively closes the ports to the cylinder which should hold it in position (or mostly so). Contrary to popular belief, a failed cylinder piston seal by itself will seldom cause the cylinder to drift because the pressures will equalize on either side of the piston (as long as the cylinder ports are closed and it's full of oil) and lock it up. I've seen cylinders with hardly any piston seal left that didn't drift at all; they wouldn't do any work, of course, because the oil inside just went right by the piston and back to the tank.

I'd focus on the control valve and anything added to it.

Here; this might help: https://www.machinerylubrication.com/Read/1119/hydraulic-cylinder-drift

Looking at the schematic, it shows the two work ports are closed when the control valve is centered. (The pump side is open to the tank). If oil was leaking across those two work ports, it's possible for pressure to increase on the lift side and pass through the load control check valve into the lift side of the ram.

I'm not sure how there would be more pressure above the piston in the ram than below; maybe because the upper side has a smaller effective volume? When you lower the door, pressure goes to the top and back through the load control, back to the control valve and then into the tank. If the pump/valve continues to run after the door is fully closed, and then everything snaps shut, there could be remaining pressure on that side which would leak internally across the work ports in the control valve and back into the lift side. The load control looks as though there is no restriction in the direction of the lift side of the ram.

Might want to check the timing for the close cycle and see that it shuts off promptly when the door is fully closed. See what the pressure gauge says, although if there is pressure on the other side, it probably won't show..

I've forgotten a lot of this stuff, sorry; a hazard of retirement.