What to Expect During a First-Time Visit from UEA (From a Hydraulic Engineers’ Perspective)

United Equipment Accessories’ (UEA) rotary union and slip ring footprint reaches almost every state in the US and to over 25 countries. This extensive footprint keeps our sales managers extremely busy connecting with potential customers. Often, UEA engineers accompany sales managers on visits to new customers.

As a hydraulic design engineer, I would give you a sneak peek into UEA’s rotary union division and the design features of our custom-made products during customer visits, especially if it is a first-time visit. Here’s what a typical visit with UEA might look like:

When introducing UEA, our tagline, “Solving Challenges from the Inside Out,” often starts the conversation. At UEA, we strive to design, manufacture and supply components that do just that. Next, we talk about our rotary unions and slip rings. As a hydraulic design engineer, I describe our four types of rotary unions, including our single unit swivel as well as the configurations of our combination rotary union + slip ring.

After introducing our rotary union line, we enumerate its various applications—and, by extension, the various industries it serves. Such applications include aerial lifts, boom trucks, cranes, excavators, forestry equipment, leveling devices, construction equipment, railroaders, shearing devices, vacuum trucks and a variety of other machines that require a rotary union. Next, we talk about specific components in our rotary unions. These include:

  • Housing
  • Spool
  • Ports and Plugs
  • Flat sheet metal parts such as the mounting plates, spool plates, and torque arms
  • Seal Kit

It is always exciting to share UEA’s machining capabilities and design technology. Our in-house capabilities include our milling and CNC centers, MIG and TIG welding, paint department, Solidworks, CAD and Simulation Finite Element Analysis software. Also, we like to give the customer an overview of what sets UEA apart from our competitors. These includes:

  • Quality inspection checklists
  • ISO certifications
  • DFMEA, PFMEA, PPAP availability
  • After sales support
  • Warranty
  • Shipping with custom packaging and returnable options

In addition, we also like to highlight our pharmaceutical-grade assembly and testing clean room as well as UEA’s high-pressure part washing system. Also, UEA’s automated rotary union testing includes:

  • 100% leak-tested ports at 1.5x max operating pressure (up to 7,500 psi for hydraulic)
  • Test oil cleanliness
  • Pressure leak tests
  • Real-time monitoring and recording of pressure, rotating torque and oil cleanliness levels
  • Documentation of all test data is saved for each serialized swivel

Last, but definitely important, we discuss our endurance test stand. Our test stand sits in a specially designed room with video surveillance and conducts accelerated-life testing of hydraulic swivels. The stand’s control program uses a test procedure that follows a specified set of testing parameters. Our real-time monitoring system gathers the following data:

  • Rotation speed and torque requirement
  • Hydraulic pressure
  • Temperature
  • Fluid cleanliness
  • Door open/close position

We design and manufacture each rotary union and rotary union + slip ring to our customer’s specific application. We ensure that our conversations with customers run the entire gamut of capabilities UEA has to offer.

I enjoy the opportunity to meet with new customers, listen to their needs and expectation, and show how UEA can help. I cannot wait for my next new customer visit to discuss how UEA can help them in solving their challenges “from the inside out.”