I don't know if this is too unusual but, several decades ago I built a hydraulic system for use as a "hammer". The background: Rolls Royce Areo division encase the ends of their turbine blades in an alloy block, prior to machining. Once the machining process is complete they need to remove the blocks. My simple system was to charge a small accumulator to fire a ram attached to a chisel type blade which did the job nicely, thank you!

Another system involved providing a source of energy to test dampers on vehicles. the system took the guesswork out of the manual and very subjective "bounce" test still currently in use I believe. The system was patented and purchased by a well known national (UK) fast fit chain, but although it worked well, it was difficult to convince car drivers of the neeed to replace dampers unless they were visibly leaking.

Just a bit of whimsy on hydraulics. I was considering mating a vane motor-pump to a centrifugal pump. The vane motor would tee from the centrigugal output and exhaust to the centrifugal input. The vane pump would tee to the centrifugal output and exhaust upstream of a check in the centrifugal output. I think the combination would have an improved curve, more pressure. It should have the best of both pump types performance. I would think it would be useful in the one to five hp size domestic and light commercial uses Where centrifugal pumps spend a lot of time pumping at near cutoff pressure with low flow. The vane unit would top off the pressure rapidly.

Any comments would be appreciated.

Summer is coming. Everyone needs a backyard water slide simulator.

http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/prototype-this-backyard-waterslide-simulator.html

http://www.grandideastudio.com/portfolio/pt-waterslide-simulator/

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=water+slide+simulator&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=pIrrSfHcKZHstgP-r6HuAQ&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&resnum=4&ct=title#

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=water+slide+simulator&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=pIrrSfHcKZHstgP-r6HuAQ&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&resnum=4&ct=title#

This aired on the discovery channel's Prototype This program.

What can't be seen is that there is a projector projecting and showing an image of what the what the person should see on a water curtain. The simulation video and motion path was designed on computer. The velocities and accelerations were converted to hydraulic position by Zoz, the guy with the blond Mohawk, and these points were downloaded in to the hydraulic controller that is capable of play back a long 10 minute motion profile. The goal was to simulate the velocities and accelerations that a person would feel in a real water slide. Some of the accelerations were toned down a bit because the hydraulic design had too much hose between the valves and the pistons so the response was not as good as it could have been.

Beat that for hydraulic whimsy