Eaton hydraulic products are all designed, built and marketed globally to support customers in their endeavours to manage power to make it safe, reliable, efficient and sustainable, says Subhasis Chatterjee, Managing Director - India, Hydraulics Group, Eaton. Excerpts from the interview...

What are the innovations from Eaton for the new-generation equipment?
At Eaton, its engineering centre in Pune is Eaton?s largest integrated, multidisciplinary Research, Development and Engineering Centre outside the US. The central purpose of EIEC is to drive growth for Eaton by providing engineering solutions using pertinent technologies to develop new products and support existing products. EIEC team is engaged in designing and developing systems and components for hydraulic and fuel pumps, valves, actuators, hoses and connectors, vehicle transmissions, clutches, superchargers and torque control products, electronic control units, communication hardware and power management software. EIEC has developed Centres of Excellence in Modeling and Simulation, Embedded Systems, Safety, Reliability & Sustainability and Intellectual Property. This centre also hosts in-house testing capabilities within the facility.

How has Eaton prepared for the stringent emission norms?
Eaton is answering the emerging needs through the development of new smart electro-hydraulic technologies that shrink the footprint of hydraulics systems, improve their performance and energy efficiency and reduce emissions. These technologies give equipment manufacturers greater design flexibility to achieve the goal that every customer desires: More function, less power consumption.

What are the major solutions offered by Eaton towards cost and energy-efficient hydraulics?
Eaton?s Hydraulics business in India is headquartered at Pimpri, Pune and it manufactures and markets a wide range of hydraulics products for the power and motion control industry. In addition, Eaton India Hydraulics also imports and trades a variety of hydraulic and fluid conveyance products like hoses and fittings. Eaton has competitive offerings in practically all segments, ranging from mobile to industrial applications, positioned as a hydraulic systems solution provider with a comprehensive product range.

The hydraulics manufacturing facility at Pimpri is one of Eaton?s Centers of Excellence (COE) for gear pumps and has been expanded to also manufacturing of steering control units and rockshaft control valves. The other key products manufactured at this facility include gear pumps, vane pumps, open and closed-loop piston pumps, directional control valves, mobile valves, hydraulic power units, and cylinders.

I would also like to highlight Eaton Heavy Duty Series-1 and 2 pumps/motors transmission and DuraForce? high-pressure piston pumps and motors; that provide precise control and high power density for increased productivity and compact sizing. Eaton?s steering control units and Hydraulic Integrated Circuits (HICs) are also industry bench-marked products for the applications; setting the highest standard of quality and customers? confidence.

Eaton India Hydraulics Business also runs a Hydraulic Training School out of Pune. It offers to customers, distributors and employees opportunities to learn basic and advanced hydraulics both for mobile and stationary applications (agriculture, constructions, material handling, machine tools, discrete manufacturing, steel and power plants, oil and gas, alternative energy etc), related product ranges, constructions, operations, and maintenance and repairing of the same. This school trains and certifies people interested in the field of hydraulics to handle Eaton hydraulics components, products, systems and solutions.

What are the solutions to provide low noise, vibration and harshness in hydraulics?
Eaton has designed solutions to suppress noise generated from hydraulics. Eaton?s Noise Vibration and Harshness (NVH) technology is a fully integrated custom solution to fully optimise noise and vibration reduction in any hydraulic system. With over 20 years of experience in noise and vibration reduction, we are able to utilise the technically improved noise reduction products in the agriculture, construction and industrial hydraulics markets. With the persistent push for lower noise emissions globally, we at Eaton continue to expand our environment-friendly products to improve overall impact for the end-user, operator and markets we serve.