Size a hydraulic power pack by adding up the flow and pressure demand of every actuator it drives, then selecting a pump and motor combination that covers the peak simultaneous load — not just the single largest cylinder.
The three numbers that matter
- Power range: hydraulic power packs are typically built from 2 to 50 HP, depending on the equipment they drive.
- Flow rate: 10 to 200 LPM (litres per minute), which determines how fast your cylinders extend and retract.
- Pressure rating: up to 210 bar, which determines how much force a given cylinder bore can generate.
Undersizing any one of these three creates a bottleneck: too little flow means slow cycle times, too little pressure means the cylinder stalls under load, and too little power means the motor overheats trying to keep up.
Checklist for sizing your power pack
- List every actuator the power pack will serve. A single power pack often drives more than one piece of equipment — bag stackers, presses, or hydraulic cylinder actuation systems in an oil seed processing plant, for example.
- Add up flow requirements for actuators that run simultaneously. If two cylinders extend at the same time, your power pack needs to supply both flows together, not just the larger of the two.
- Match pressure rating to your highest-force cylinder. Bore size and required force together determine the pressure a cylinder needs; size the power pack's pressure rating to the most demanding cylinder in the system, up to the 210 bar ceiling.
- Choose pump type based on duty cycle. Gear, vane, and piston pumps each suit different combinations of pressure, flow, and continuous-duty requirements — this is a detail worth confirming with the manufacturer rather than assuming.
- Plan for continuous operation, not just peak demand. A power pack sized only for occasional peak flow may run hot or wear out early if the plant actually demands that flow continuously.
- Confirm filtration and cooling are sized to the unit, not added as an afterthought. Integrated filtration and cooling are standard features on a properly specified power pack — undersized filtration is a common cause of premature valve and pump wear.
Why self-contained design matters
A self-contained hydraulic power pack — pump, motor, reservoir, filtration, control valves, and cooling built into one package — reduces installation time and gives you a single point of maintenance access, rather than a hydraulic system assembled piecemeal on site. This matters as much for an oil seed processing plant's bag stacker as it does for a press or actuation system elsewhere in the plant.
When to bring in an engineering team
If you're adding new hydraulic equipment to an existing power pack, or specifying a power pack for a new plant with multiple simultaneous actuators, get the full list of flow and pressure demands reviewed together before ordering. A power pack sized against a single worst-case cylinder, without accounting for what else runs at the same time, is one of the most common causes of underperformance in the field.
Availability in India
Designed and built at Pragya's Pithampur (Indore) works and supplied to oil seed processing plants across India. Equipment is fabricated to the relevant IS standards, delivered by road to your plant, and installed and commissioned on site by our own engineers, who also train your operators.
Interested in our industrial equipment?
Our engineering team, based in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, India, will recommend the right solution for your plant requirements.
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