Hydraulics is great for lifting heavy loads and applying large amounts of force, but the same power that is required to exert a large amount of lifting or compression force can also do damage or produce waste if not controlled. A sawmill in British Columbia used a pair of 31-ft.-long hydraulic cylinders to operate a carriage that lifts log bundles into the mill, but the lifting carriage occasionally sustained damage by the hydraulic cylinders moving at different rates of speed.

In China, a 3,000-ton automotive body panel press failed to reliably keep the platen level during a compression cycle. In Indiana, a vehicle roof-crush test system needed to exert a precisely executed and documented amount of force up to 100 tons on a vehicle roof as large as that of a school bus in order to meet industry safety specifications.