The Science Behind Hydraulics
Since 1934, Lange Lift has been building the best manual lift tables, electric lift tables, battery lift tables and air lift tables in the world, all enabled by the exceptionally fascinating principles of hydraulics. The power of moving liquids delivers the force necessary for Lange Lift products to move your heavy workload to new heights, and position your parts where you need them quickly, smoothly and safely. By also powering everything from car brakes and garbage trucks to motor boat steering and garage jacks, hydraulics is a powerful and important force that delivers safety, convenience, and power to our modern world. Let’s take a deeper look and learn more about how hydraulics works.
Hydraulics works because of a simple principle: you can’t compress a liquid. Gases are easy to compress, as you do when you squeeze a balloon. Solids are just the opposite, it’s very difficult to compress a block of metal or wood with your fingers. Liquids, however, are a bit like solids in some ways, and a bit like liquids in others. Since liquids easily flow from place to place, you might think they’d behave like gases when you tried to squeeze them, but that is not the case. Liquids are virtually incompressible.
The fact that liquids don’t compress easily is incredibly useful. It is the reason why water can be used with force from a hose or water gun. By putting pressure on the water, it is forced out at a high speed. If water were compressible, it would simply compress to a smaller space and not exit the nozzle at a high speed.
Liquid in a pipe behaves this way as well. The science behind hydraulics is called Pascal’s principle. Essentially, because the liquid in the pipe is incompressible, the pressure must stay constant all the way through it, even when you’re pushing it hard at one end or the other. If you press down with a small force on a small area, there must be a large force acting upward on a larger area to keep the pressure equal. That’s how the force becomes magnified.
In a Lange Lift lift table, the hydraulics are controlled by either manual force, electric control, or air control. When an operator uses one of these controls to lift the table surface, they are instructing the hydraulic system to pump fluid into the narrow pipes and hoses, forcing the hydraulic rams to extend, and thereby lifting the table. This smooth, powerful motion ensures that a Lange Lift table has the power to lift heavy loads with easy while keeping the load safe and level.
Contact us today to learn more
Since 1934, Lange Lift has been manufacturing high quality hydraulic lift tables, scissor lifts, and custom lift products for material handling in a wide array of industries across the world. Contact us today to learn more about what our great products can do for your business.
