Prince Hydraulic Valves

Prince Manufacturing, of Sioux City Iowa, has built some of the finest hydraulic valves in America since the 1950’s. Mostly lever-operated directional valves, and accessory valves such as reliefs, selectors, dividers, etc.

We at Cylinder Services are pleased to be one of their few Master Distributors.

Prince’s valves are manufactured with the most technically advanced machining and measuring equipment available. For example, on my last visit I watched as RD5000 valve spools and bores were machined and individually measured, to the millionth of an inch. The measuring devices are connected to a computer, and network, which records the results with each specific valve’s record. The computer displays a graph with a green band along the center target measurement. Above and below the green are yellow bands indicating barely acceptable dimensions, and outside the yellow are red bands. If they go into the yellow, an alarm notifies the operator so they can adjust the machine to bring it into tolerance. But if the results deviate into the red, the alarm goes not just to the operator, but to the plant superintendent and corporate office too I think! As you can probably guess, the operators jump if measurements wander even into the yellow range! As a result, the valve spools and bores are always within +/- 15 millionths of the engineered diameter.

Years ago, Prince had to match-fit valve spools and housings to get a good fit. So spools could not be used in another bore than the one they came in. Today, we can put any spool into any housing bore – they are made to such close tolerances. Very few manufacturers of this type of valve come close to this degree of precision.

We have been selling, and using, Prince hydraulic valves since the 1980’s. We know the valves, how they work, and how to use them in hydraulic circuits. We carry most Prince valves in stock, and we stock PARTS for them too. If you wear out a handle, or a spring breaks, you don’t have to buy a new valve – you can pick up new parts here, or we can send them to you today!