Air winch over hydraulic, tried it on a site in Tulsa and got burned

I mean, everyone I work with swears hydraulic is the only way for boom swings, but I ran an air winch on a job in Tulsa for two weeks and thought it'd save us time. Turned out the air supply had pressure drops whenever two other crews used the same compressor, so my swings were jerky and slow. We lost about 3 hours total across the week waiting for pressure to stabilize, and I had to redo a couple of picks. Maybe it was just that setup, but has anyone else had better luck with air winches on a dedicated line?

1 comments

Log in to join the discussion

Log In

1 Comment

nelson.finley1mo ago

Ha! Sounds like you got a bad deal, but blaming air winches for that is like blaming your truck for a flat tire. That Tulsa job was a shared line problem, not a winch problem. Ive run air rigs on a dedicated compressor for years and theyre smooth as butter, way lighter than hauling a hydraulic unit around, and you can feather the load way better for delicate picks. You had one bad setup with pressure drops and suddenly the whole tech is garbage? That's like saying all diesel engines suck because one fleet's fuel filters were clogged. Hydraulic has its place for sure, but write off air after one bad week and you're just gonna be stuck with the heavy, expensive option forever.

0