Parker Hannifin has launched a new repair service for Parker industrial tie rod cylinders, available through its Hydraulics Technology Centre (HTC) programme. Designed to help customers maximise the operating life of their hydraulic cylinders, while reducing expensive downtime and taking advantage of Parker product quality and guarantees, the new cylinder repair service is fully certified by Parker and meets the company's high standards of quality, service and knowledge. Although modern hydraulic cylinders deliver exceptional performance and reliability, downtime caused by cylinder failure can be costly, particularly when one includes the time taken to diagnose and repair or replace a hydraulic cylinder and the resulting loss of production.

To address these issues, each Parker Hydraulics Technology Centre operating the new cylinder repair service uses genuine Parker parts, with turnaround of repairs typically being within 24 hours and a fast track service available on request.

In addition, all Parker cylinders are repaired to the original specification and, depending on the nature of the repair requested by the customer, are guaranteed for up to 12 months after the work has been completed.

Perhaps most importantly, under the cylinder repair service scheme, participating Parker Hydraulics Technology Centres will have access to the company's serial number database, which contains details of all its cylinders, allowing engineers quickly to identify the precise specification of a cylinder before repairing it.

In addition, the Parker Hydraulics Technology Centre is able to upload details of work carried out on a cylinder to the database, ensuring cylinder history records are up to date for future use.

The first Hydraulics Technology Centres to participate in the cylinder repair service scheme include Hedley Hydraulics and South Eastern Hydraulics, with many more accredited centres to be added in the future.

Richard Haigh, Managing Director of Hedley Hydraulics, believes: 'The new cylinder repair scheme is an important step forward for the industry and will enable us ensure that cylinders are maintained effectively throughout the operating life of our customers' machines and to help them drive down the overall cost of ownership'.