So, the other day I found myself in a bit of a bind. I was looking at this piece of equipment, I think it was an imported hydraulic ram, and the pressure gauge on it, and all the specs in the manual, were listed in 'bar'. Now, I'm used to 'psi' for just about everything I do around here. All my own tools, my air compressor, everything's in psi. So when I saw "Max Operating Pressure: 100 bar" staring back at me, I knew I had to get that into terms I properly understood before I even thought about hooking it up.

My first step, as always when I'm a bit stumped by units, was to figure out the actual conversion. I couldn't just guess, especially not with pressures that high. That’s a recipe for disaster, and I’ve learned that lesson the hard way a long time ago with a much smaller, but still messy, incident involving an over-pressurized paint pot. Never again.

I rummaged around my desk for a bit. I’ve got this old, dog-eared conversion sheet I printed out years ago. It’s seen better days, coffee stains and all, but it’s usually got what I need. Sometimes I just try to pull the number from memory, but for something like 100 bar, I wanted to be sure. My memory's not what it used to be for these precise figures!

After a minute or two, I found the section for pressure. And there it was, plain as day: 1 bar is equal to about 14.50377 psi. For quick mental math, I often just use 14.5, but since this was for a max operating pressure, I decided to use the more accurate number. No point cutting corners when safety or equipment life is on the line, right?

So, the next part was easy enough. I needed to convert 100 bar. I grabbed a notepad and a pen – I still like to work these things out by hand, helps it stick in my brain better.

It’s a simple multiplication:

The value in bar, which is 100.

Multiplied by the conversion factor, which is 14.50377 psi per bar.

So, I did the calculation: 100 bar × 14.50377 psi/bar.

And the answer came out to 1450.377 psi.

I wrote that down clearly next to the 100 bar figure in my notes for this particular piece of kit. So, around 1450 psi. That gives me a much better feel for what I'm dealing with. It’s a pretty hefty pressure, and now I can compare it properly to the other gear I have and the hoses I plan to use.

It's always a good reminder, these little unit conversion tasks. Keeps you on your toes. Especially when you're working with equipment from different parts of the world. Getting it straight in your head is key. So yeah, that was my little adventure in converting 100 bar to psi. All sorted now and I can move on to the next step with this ram.