Valve in operation for over half a century

How long can a servo valve last? This was also asked by Moog, one of the main producers of these components, which last year - to celebrate the 40th anniversary of its presence in Italy and the 50th anniversary of its arrival in Europe - launched a competition to find the example with the greatest length of service, provided it is still functioning.

The winner of the competition is Doug Bitner , Head of the Fluid Engineering Laboratory at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Saskatchewan, in Canada, who was able to demonstrate, thanks to a video, that he still has a Moog 21 servovalve in operation (photo on the right ), produced in 1963 , inserted into a closed-loop test system used by teachers and students to conduct experiments in the aerospace and industrial sectors.
“I knew I had a lot of Moog servovalves in the lab, so I thought I had a chance,” Bitner said. But I was really amazed when I found out I had won. We have conducted durability tests in the laboratory on agricultural machinery frames, up to one million cycles and the Moog servo valve still performs well."

The Canadian lab isn't the only one with vintage servovalves. In fact, second place went to Walter Andreas of IABG, who uses a Moog 22 Series servovalve produced in  1966 in his laboratory in Germany (photo on the left).

In joint third place were John Shannon of TATA Steel's CPP Trostre Works (UK) and Tom Gecse of US Steel (Canada), who sent the jury evidence of servo valves dating back to 1969 in operation on rolling and tension leveling plants.

The Moog servo valve, which transforms a digital or analog signal into hydraulic flow or pressure, was introduced by William C. Moog Jr. in 1951.

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