Metal finishing Q&As since 1989

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Heavy equipment dealer worries if lime hurts chrome hydraulic cylinders

2003

How harmful is powdered lime - the type used on some earthmoving sites to dry and stabilize plastic soils - to the chrome on hydraulic cylinder rods of the equipment working in and around it?

I've noticed dulling and graying of the chrome, but is it superficial or has some chrome disappeared?

I am curious as to whether there is a need for some form of chemical or mechanical protectant/guard/wash for machines in this environment.

Barry Turner
heavy-construction equip dealer - Dumfries, Virginia

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Lime is both caustic (highly alkaline) and highly abrasive, so it's certainly not good for chrome or anything else. However, one reason that chrome is so good for hydraulic rods is that the cracked deposit (like a dry lake bed in miniature) holds oil just right. Anything you put on it would impair functionality.

Two possibilities might be frequent washing, or a teflon bellows over the rod.

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey

Lime is bad. It's that easy, the hydraulic fluid at standard operating temperatures 180 def F will turn the fluid into a contamination nightmare throughout the system. Causing pump, hose, tubing, valve, seal failures.

Mike O'Neill
- downingtown, Pennsylvania
September 7, 2009