Lock & Dam

Lock and dam cylinders are a different animal from almost everything else we build: very large bore, long stroke, slow motion, enormous force, and a service life measured in decades rather than years. These are civil-infrastructure actuators — they move gates that hold back rivers — and the whole design philosophy is longevity and reliability over speed. A gate cylinder might cycle only a few times a day, but it may be in the water for thirty years, and pulling one for repair is a major event.

Immersion is the defining challenge. Rods spend their lives in a splash zone or fully submerged, so standard chrome plating is not enough — these builds call for upgraded plating systems, thick corrosion-resistant coatings, or alternative rod materials, paired with seals and wipers chosen for silt, biofouling, and constant water contact. Because the loads are huge and the motion is slow, the structural design leans conservative: generous wall thickness, large bearings, and real safety factors, so nothing is working near its limit even at full gate load. Long strokes get stop tubes and bearing lengths sized to carry the bending that comes with any long column.

This is build-it-once-and-forget-it engineering, so materials, corrosion protection, and safety factors matter far more than shaving weight or cycle time. We build lock, spillway, and valve cylinders to the print and the applicable specification, and reverse-engineer aging units where the structure's envelope is fixed. Every cylinder is pressure-tested before it ships — for infrastructure this critical, the proof happens on our floor, not in the river.

Representative applications

• Miter and sector lock-gate operating cylinders
• Tainter and slide spillway gate hoists
• Culvert and filling-valve cylinders
• Wicket and crest gate actuation
• Bulkhead and stoplog handling cylinders