Looking for advice on if I should consider tooling up for hose making at work. any thoughts on economical crimpers?
John
That's a huge subject.....
How many fittings numbers? How many hose numbers? Can you consolidate to one brand? How much hose and how any fittings can you burn through in a day, week, year? How costly (time and down time) is it to get hoses made?
You've got to look at your usage, see if you can burn up enough stuff to be a "distributor" from your chosen brand of stuff. That's ideal. Othewise you're gonna be buying from a distributor. Markups are typically quite fair, but that is one extra link in the supply chain. You'll probably find that you save some doing your own, but not a bunch. Takes a LONG time to amortize a modest fitting and hose collection. But then you do have the immediate availability of non-stock hoses. That's how we got in. Vermont is a pretty small town, and very few hydraulic shops (and none of the parts stores) want to be bothered to get up in the middle of the night, in a snow storm, to knock out a hose that'll net them almost enough profit to cover the coffee they bought on the way in.....
Economical crimpers? No. Just no. You can spend as much as you want on one, or you can buy a very modest one, but don't think eBaychina is gonna be looking out for your best interest, tight dimensions, repeatability, all that stuff. Cheap costs WAY more in the long run. Ideally, the machine would be ordered through the same sales critter from the manufacturer or distributor that's going to supply your hoses. The one that's gonna help you get set up with the type/construction, and fitting series that is going to take the best care of your needs. Same "don't cheap" advice goes for the hoses... Of the brands that are easily available to us, Parker (not cheap) is the cheapest hoses we can put together if you look at five, ten, fifteen year statistics, that include down time, clean up, lost work, etc. All the cost of hose failure. I don't even have a way to break down hoses that were called out by time or condition before they failed, so you've got to figure that in too.... I'm not saying Parker is the one you should settle on, there are other quality brands with good, consistant, durable products. If you find hoses at the auto parts store, (with a very few exceptions), those are not your brands. Hoses are borderline consumables. They fit the consumable's rule of thumb. Cost per hour, day, month, year, or whatever metric you might use to get a return from said hoses.
What type of crimpers? That depends on what you're doing. Adjustable (universal) crimpers can do a lot more brands, fitting sizes, etc. But you have to have or acquire specs for each hose and fitting, which burns up time. My suggestion is that if you need that functionality, pony up for it. If you're doing maintenance with lower output... Save on that, get a fixed die machine, suck up the extra dies if (when) you expand, keep the time to put to other things. And minions.... Are you gonna have minions to help you run this machine? Minions tend to don't like measuring and checking things when it's a lot easier to just squish stuff until it looks about right.... Fixed dies help in that department if it's an issue.
