Hydraulic Cylinders for Lifting: Rams, Jacks, Lifts, Truck Beds, and Tail Lifts

Introduction

Eurobalt manufactures custom hydraulic cylinders of any complexity to customer drawings or technical specifications. Our in-house capability covers cylinder tubes, machined and chrome-plated rods, cast or machined-from-bar end caps, gland heads, piston assemblies, and full pressure testing. We build everything from compact jack cylinders a few centimetres in stroke to multi-metre rams used in presses and heavy lifting equipment.

This page is an overview of the lifting applications we regularly build for: hydraulic lifts, hydraulic rams, hydraulic jacks, tipper hoists and tail-lift cylinders for trucks, and press-bed cylinders. Below: typical configurations, materials, and what we machine, weld, plate, paint, and test at our own workshop.

Applications at a glance

Hydraulic lifts

Cylinders for vehicle lifts (two-post, four-post, scissor), dock lifts, freight platform lifts, and stationary loading lifts. Most are single-acting plunger cylinders or double-acting tie-rod cylinders, 60 to 200 mm bore, 600 to 3000 mm stroke, 200 to 250 bar working pressure. Where the customer specifies a synchronous twin-cylinder setup, we hone bores in matched pairs to keep performance consistent across both units.

Hydraulic rams

A “ram” in industrial usage means a heavy-duty, typically single-acting cylinder where the rod itself acts as the load-bearing plunger. Rams of this type are pressed into service in log splitters, hydraulic presses, lock gates, and lifting tables. Bore from 80 to 320 mm, strokes up to 4 m for telescopic units, working pressures 250 to 350 bar. Welded construction with forged eye ends or trunnion mounts is standard; cataphoresis or two-pack epoxy paint for outdoor service.

Hydraulic jacks

Compact lifting jacks: bottle jacks, toe jacks, machinery levelling jacks, and bolt-tensioning jacks. Bore 40 to 125 mm, stroke 100 to 400 mm, working pressures up to 700 bar for high-force compact units. We supply naked cylinder bodies for OEM jack assembly as well as fully built-up jacks with handles, return springs, and pressure-release valves.

Truck-bed and press-bed cylinders

• Tipper hoist cylinders. Telescopic single-acting cylinders that raise the bed of dump and tipper trucks. Multi-stage telescopic configurations for high-capacity bodies; base-stage bore 90 to 180 mm, total stroke 1500 to 4500 mm, working pressures 180 to 250 bar. Forged trunnion or clevis mounts with hardened pins; chrome-plated stages and outdoor-grade two-pack paint as standard.
• Tail-lift cylinders. Double-acting cylinders for hydraulic tail lifts on lorries and vans (the rear platform that raises and lowers loads to ground level). Bore 50 to 80 mm, stroke 400 to 900 mm, working pressures 180 to 210 bar. Stainless-rod options for fleets running in winter de-icing salt.
• Press-bed cylinders. The lower-platen cylinder of a hydraulic press, returning the bed (bolster) after each stroke. Heavy short-stroke designs, bore 160 to 400 mm, stroke typically under 500 mm.

Typical configurations

Application	Bore (mm)	Stroke (mm)	Working pressure	Mounting
Vehicle / dock lift	60-200	600-3000	200-250 bar	Flange, foot, or clevis
Heavy-duty ram	80-320	up to 4000 (tele.)	250-350 bar	Forged eye, trunnion, or threaded
Compact jack	40-125	100-400	up to 700 bar	Foot, tapped base, or female thread
Tipper hoist (telescopic)	90-180 (base)	up to 4500	180-250 bar	Trunnion or clevis
Tail-lift cylinder	50-80	400-900	180-210 bar	Clevis to clevis
Press-bed cylinder	160-400	up to 500	250-315 bar	Front flange

All values are typical ranges. We manufacture to whatever bore, stroke, and pressure rating the application drawing requires. We follow ISO 6020-1, ISO 6022, and ISO 6020-2 mounting standards by default and can build to NFPA, JIS, or fully custom mount geometries.

Materials

Component	Standard	Grade
Cylinder tube (cold-drawn, honed)	EN 10305-1	E355 (≈ ST52, AISI 1024 equivalent)
Piston rod	EN 10277-2	C45E (≈ AISI 1045), induction-hardened, hard-chrome plated
End caps, gland heads	EN 10025-2	S355J2, or forged from C45 for high-load mounts
Forged eye ends, clevises	EN 10083-2	C45 / 42CrMo4
Mounting hardware	ISO 898-1	Class 8.8 / 10.9

Rod plating is hard chrome 25 to 40 µm over a thin nickel underlayer, polished to Ra ≤ 0.2 µm to give 600+ hours in salt-spray tests for outdoor lifts. Tube bores are skive-and-roller-burnished to Ra ≤ 0.4 µm.

Manufacturing in-house

The full cylinder manufacturing chain runs through our own shop:

• Cutting and turning. Band-saw and CNC lathe work on tubes, bar stock, and forgings.
• Honing. Internal honing of cylinder tubes to bore tolerance H8 and surface finish Ra ≤ 0.4 µm.
• Welding. MIG/MAG and TIG, certified welders, weld procedures qualified to EN ISO 15614.
• Hard-chrome plating of piston rods on our own line (rod diameters up to 200 mm, lengths up to 6 m).
• Heat treatment. Induction hardening of rod surfaces (HRC 50-55, hardened depth 1.5-2 mm); through-hardening or normalising of forged components by partner heat-treaters with EN 10204 type 3.1 certification.
• Painting. Two-pack epoxy or polyurethane systems; cataphoresis on request for high-corrosion service.
• Assembly. Seal kits from Parker, Trelleborg, Hallite, Merkel; bespoke seal sets where the customer specifies.
• Pressure testing. Every cylinder is tested to 1.5× nominal working pressure and run for full-stroke cycles before despatch.

Quality control

Our QC programme follows every cylinder from raw stock to despatch:

• 100 % dimensional inspection of bore, rod, and mount geometries against the drawing.
• Rod surface roughness and chrome-layer thickness measured after plating.
• Weld inspection: 100 % visual; magnetic-particle (MT) or dye-penetrant (PT) on critical welds; ultrasonic (UT) on full-penetration welds where the application requires it.
• Hydrostatic test at 1.5× working pressure, 3-minute hold, zero leak and zero permanent deformation.
• Function test: full-stroke extension and retraction, drift test, leakage past piston seal measured against ISO 10100.
• EN 10204 type 3.1 material certificates retained for tube, rod, and forging stock; copies supplied to the customer on request.

Standards reference

Domain	Standard	Application
Cylinder mounts	ISO 6020-1, ISO 6020-2, ISO 6022	Standard mount interfaces
Cylinder tubes	EN 10305-1	Cold-drawn precision tubes
Piston rods	EN 10277-2	Bright steel bar
Welding qualification	EN ISO 15614	WPS for tube-to-end-cap welds
Material certificates	EN 10204 type 3.1	Mill certs traceable to heat number
Hydraulic seal cleanliness	ISO 4406	Fluid cleanliness for test bench
Hydraulic cylinder leakage	ISO 10100	Acceptance criteria for piston seals

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Eurobalt: custom hydraulic cylinder manufacturing in Europe. Lifting and material-handling cylinders are one of our standing specialities.

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