Arbor vs. Hydraulic press.

The main advantage to an arbor press is that you get "feel." A hydraulic press has little or no feel (other than the frame creaking as it loads up.) With a hydraulic press you can rather easily warp or bend the shaft you are pressing the bearing off of or on to. Most pin pressing work is best done in an arbor press. You need to get and use the tool that is the right size for the job you are doing. Unless you are doing fairly big stuff I doubt that you need more than a 20 ton hydraulic press. A 20 ton will handle all automotive sized work. You may be better off getting one of each rather than trying to do all your pressing with a single big press.

You also need to be very careful with setups and tooling with a hydraulic press. The work can load up like a big spring and all of a sudden it lets go and you have an axle shaft bouncing at you that was just launched with 50 tons of pressure. You need really solid setups supporting the bearing and/or the shaft in the press. This is not the time to improvise with bits of scrap and pipe. An indispensable tool for bearing R&R is a good bearing splitter.




-DU-

Those are both nice looking presses.The main advantage to an arbor press is that you get "feel." A hydraulic press has little or no feel (other than the frame creaking as it loads up.) With a hydraulic press you can rather easily warp or bend the shaft you are pressing the bearing off of or on to. Most pin pressing work is best done in an arbor press. You need to get and use the tool that is the right size for the job you are doing. Unless you are doing fairly big stuff I doubt that you need more than a 20 ton hydraulic press. A 20 ton will handle all automotive sized work. You may be better off getting one of each rather than trying to do all your pressing with a single big press.You also need to be very careful with setups and tooling with a hydraulic press. The work can load up like a big spring and all of a sudden it lets go and you have an axle shaft bouncing at you that was just launched with 50 tons of pressure. You need really solid setups supporting the bearing and/or the shaft in the press. This is not the time to improvise with bits of scrap and pipe. An indispensable tool for bearing R&R is a good bearing splitter. OTC Tools makes a line of pullers and accessories that I have found to be of good quality.-DU-