Excessive heat is a severe contaminant. It wreaks havoc on oil (chemically and physically) and retards lubricant performance by increasing wear, corrosion and friction. Friction and wear cause more heat, which sends the machine into a cycle of despair.
For many years, the process of analyzing lubricants, coolants and fuels to improve the reliability and maintenance of machines has remained relatively unchanged. Fluids typically are sampled from an asset on a regular cadence and sent to a lab to be processed. The results are interpreted by experts or simple rules-based analysis, and a report is returned. The asset owner must then use the report to decide whether to take action or continue normal operation. Although laboratory analysis produces extremely valuable data, the process can become somewhat cumbersome and may not provide a consistent spectrum of deep insights that asset owners need to increase performance and reliability.
Why do programs designed to improve plant lubrication come and go? Many lubrication programs are on again, off again.
Excellence in lubrication, like other quality efforts, dies for a number of reasons. But the phenomenon can be essentially reduced to a failure to institutionalize excellence in machinery lubrication – meaning the values of the organization were never changed at the core.
The process of setting oil cleanliness targets is a visible, measurable performance standard. It’s like controlling your weight, blood pressure or cholesterol level by frequent measurement. These are controllable root causes of disease for those who aspire to a long, healthy life. In machine reliability, it’s proactively taking control of your machines, so they won’t take control of you.
The differences between standard-performance, high-performance and specialty-performance lubricant products are not always clear. The fact that these three categories of products are all marketed to an array of mechanical and operating conditions complicates the selection process.
