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Four lubrication tips that ensure excellence

When it comes to lubrication, there are a lot of things that you can do to achieve excellence in the field and ensure that your lubricants, and your equipment are in tip-top condition. Here are some of the best tips we have found for ensuring your lubricants are the best they can be:

Test new deliveries of lubricant

In a lot of machinery, any deviation in the quality of a lubricant, even if it is from a top company like Shell or Fuchs, can have terrible consequences. As a result, it is imperative that you confirm that any new delivery of lubricant is of sufficient quality. This is particularly the case if the lubricant will be used in a critical part.

Providing your supplier with regular feedback is also a good way to encourage incremental improvements in the quality of your lubrication.

Attain and sustain dry oil

If you can avoid letting moisture into your system, then you will not have to go to the trouble of removing it at a later date when it starts to cause problems. Although it is extremely difficult and not always necessary to achieve a completely dry state, it is usually free and emulsified water that causes the biggest problems, and this is certainly something you can get to grips with.

Preventing water from environmental, process and machine sources can be achieved by looking at things like the improper regulation of pressure in turbines, broken or incorrectly installed vapour extraction systems and leaking seals, to name a few.

Do not overgrease

Overgreasing can be as bad for machinery as undergreasing in many cases, and it will cost you more in lubricant costs too. This is why it is important to calculate the level of grease a bearing requires, using its dimensions and geometry to do so.

Most people think that applying more grease will get rid of more contaminants, but this is not always the case and can lead to a build up. The easiest way to avoid overgreasing is to use a properly calibrated automatic grease system, which is checked and recalibrated on a regular basis.

Change oil based on its condition

Replacing oil when its condition deteriorates, thus requiring a change rather than doing so on a regular interval, which may have been arbitrarily decided upon, is a good way to cut lubricant costs, whilst ensuring that oil is changed when needed. Of course, in order to use this strategy, oil must be closely monitored.

The above tips are fairly simple to implement, but they can have a huge impact on your bottom line.

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