Are you saying the snails brought the boat to a crawl?

Terry O

Yes, together with the rest of the junk they had in their fuel tank. The owner claimed that his engine problems were caused by our diesel.

When you use an unknown product and something happens, who or what is the culprit? I know about trucks that never entered a service bay (too expensive) and when they have a flat tyre: "It is that new (fuel, windshield, driver, spouse .... just fill in the blanks) fault

We learned a long time ago after verifying with a lubricant manufacturer rep. that.

1. The manufacturer can and will not guantee cleanliness of the shipping container from a supplier.
2. bulk shipped oil will generally have high levels of water and silica.
3. performing filtering and centrifuging is a very cost effective measure prior to putting into the machinery.

We found this out the hard way.

I agree with most of the others.

Sampling of oil upon receipt is a good practice to identify problems that may be traceable to suppliers and shippers. That allows you to be an educated consumer, compare suppliers/shippers, and provide feedback so they will learn that you are not a customer that will allow them to get away with sloppy practices.

Filtering the oil as you put it into the equipment helps minize problems from previous possible contamination during off-site or on-site handling. It usually doesn't take much longer, just transfer the oil into the equipment using a pump/filter rig instead of gravity or pump w/o filter cartridge.

A few thoughts to interject here. I support oil sampling when delivered to (us) the customer, as there is no legal requirement of cleanliness for an oil supplier to provide to the customer. Think about that, no legal requirement for cleanliness. Heard of the old cliche "Have slippery slope - will slip." Oil suppliers won't let it get out of hand, they will control their delivered cleanliness but only to the level you expect them to.

Think of the ISO balancing standard. It was commonplace to have a rotor balanced to G6.3, or G2.5 until people realized that an ISO G1.0 was not really that difficult to obtain, but they did realize the tremendous benefit to reliability.

My statement is this: If you trust your oil to someone else (who supplies it to you) for cleanliness, then you will get what you expect. What is ultimately the objective of the oil supplier? To reduce your oil consumption? I think not. It is sell more!

Think of your blood. Would you trust any supplier of blood that goes into your body? Someone that is a fly by night operation? Well, the oil in your circulation systems, and pumps etc. is the life blood of your equipment! Like I said before, if you don't test it you will get exactly what you expect.

I have changed oil suppliers in two different plants and both times, I have required the oil (bulk) to be delivered by the supplier filtered. Filtered before going into the bulk tank for delivery at a minimum.

New oil right out of the drum is not synonymous to clean oil, it is a good practice to filter out the oil or to use a filter cart in transfering oil from the container to the system. A dual filtration system will be suited for this application, one will remove the contaminants depending upon the efficiency and beta rating of the filter selected and the other will remove dissolved water.

Rolly Angeles

OK don't mean to be devils advocate here however there is an economical aspect to all this extra work getting oil cleanliness as "perfect as possible". I think we have to make sure its not an ego trip we're going on to be able to stand up and say - "wow this is my oil cleanliness level - how clever I am ! "
Personally if I am not having any reliability issues that I can identify as being caused by oil contamination - and sure the better your cleanliness levels the longer the life you can expect from your machine components (I agree with this point) but to a certain degree there will be a point where the effort to achieve will outweigh the benefits - a "optimum break even point" you might say.

Am I causing a ruckus here, speaking to thin air - or does some of what I say make sense.
Look forward to your views - differing or not.

Mike.

Guys, just to add more fuel to the fire before I go home and get trampled on by my kids--
I have some critical gbxs with oil in that I wouldn't have the slightest idea what ISO cleanliness level they should be at.
But - we change oil in them, do 3 monthly Lube sampling (and monitor the results) and hey - they've been running fine for as long as I can remember probably to the point where if one of them starts fading now it wouldn't be what I call a "life cut short" - and all of what I'm doing with no regard what so ever to what ISO level we should be trying to achieve or "better" in the system.
Am I missing something here?

Mike.

quote:

Originally posted by mike66:
Personally if I am not having any reliability issues that I can identify as being caused by oil contamination - and sure the better your cleanliness levels the longer the life you can expect from your machine components (I agree with this point) but to a certain degree there will be a point where the effort to achieve will outweigh the benefits - a "optimum break even point" you might say.

Am I causing a ruckus here, speaking to thin air - or does some of what I say make sense.
Look forward to your views - differing or not.

Your view is in between the words I mentioned earlier. Being in the industry for as long as I have, you begin to think everyone thinks like I do. Can't you see what I mean? is a typical statement.

Anyway, you are correct. It all depends on the criticality of the system you're talking about. Does the oil need to be hydraulic quality? For a gearbox, no. For a slow speed circulation system, no. For hydraulics, yes.

When I ran a lube department, I had the lubricators sample gearboxes once a quarter, and hydraulic/circulation systems monthly. The inherent properties of a gearbox is to have wear particles, so don't wear yourself out (pun - get it?) trying to keep a gearbox's oil to a 16/14/13 ISO count. Those you shouldn't even test for ISO code. Circulation systems are the ones you test. You test those systems for ISO code to find out the filter's efficency, and if the bearings are deteriorating.

Also, in a gearbox, the main lubricated points are the gears and gear teeth. These can have extreme wear and still perform, where a bearing may probably have already failed with the level of contamination that is in a gearbox.

I like to comment that all of life is a balance. Balance work with play, and play with work. You can never be into one thing too much. You have to take a break from your work in order to be refreshed. As Steven Covey says, "sharpen the saw." You can cut down more trees in the same time with a sharp saw than to keep at it with a dull saw. Lubrication is also a balance. A balance between what is necessary, and what time you spend on it. In fact, all of RCM is a balance. If a system/equipment/component is critical to the process (with the many forms of criticality - safety, environment, process, cost, time, part availability, lead time, etc.) you can then spend the appropriate time on that to maintain it. If it is a system that can run to fail, then let it. It's a non-critical asset.

Does that make sense?

Thanks James and yes it does

Regards, Mike.

quote:

Originally posted by Terrence O'Hanlon:
Is it reasonable to expect a certain level of cleanliness from lubrication suppliers?

The chain of custody is complex and container tranfers are plentiful between the refinery and the customer. Each adds to the contamination load.

Is it best practice to have to filter new oil before using?

Terry O

Terry Terry Terry,
Shame on you for making us think.
Is it a reasonable expectation to expect that an oil as delivered is clean? Yes! Are we normally satisfied with the cleanliness of the product as delivered. No! Why.....cause your preaching to the converted we all "know" that "free from contaminents" is good and that contamination is bad......
Do we all get "bad" batches of lube delivered. Dam straight Skippy...from free water in 1100 lube cubes to solid contaminents in bulk deliveries, to critters in drums.....the normal responce is where in the specs does it say no water or where does it say ISO to be XX/XX/XX and guess what they are right. Can they deliver to specs yep but you'd better be prepared to pay a very high premium. Much cheaper for you to do the clean up yourselves. Think that that is a concidence? Most of the majors are commodity producers and specials (clean oils) are outside of their normal production runs.
Our only saving point in the age old "Implied warranty of merchantability" wherin if the product is sold as a hydraulic oil for a certain application type then it's properties (as delivered) should cause the application no harm. Now comes the fun part try to prove it.
Sorry if this sounds like I'm putting all the blame on the refiners. I believe we as end users (consumers) are mainly to blame. The market will cater to the demand. Most end users are still willing to accept and not question the issue you raised here.

So filter before use? as has been previously replied, in this thread, iff and only iff the application and previous delivery history require the oil be conditioned prior to use. Why fix it if there are no measurable benifets. Warm and cosy is nice but hardly ecnomically justifiable.

regards.....

Lubricant suppliers are tasked to do a 'flashlight' inspection to verify that there is no free water, rust or other loose debris in the drum prior to filling from their bulk tanks.

Obviously, this doesn't represent a contamination control parameter since the employee can't see the particles that are there in tremendous concentrations.

Additionally, lubricant manufacturers leave shipping the lubricant to the customer, who in most cases is the local distributors. These small businesses contract with petroleum haulers to move the tanker loads from the blend plant to the local site. The ONLY standard for cleanliness imposed on the truck is that it be 'Diesel Wet', which means that it cannot have been last charged with gasoline. There is no solid contaminant standard, and there is no expectation that one will be created since most end users don't know about, or care about, particles that cannot be seen.

Lastly, since there is no standard for cleanliness that must be met, and since there is no practical mechanism to keep the oil clean through the point of delivery, for the time being, it falls to the lubricant user to decide how much clealiness to 'impose' on the finished lubricant through in-plant lubricant filtering. Fortunately, this is neither hard or expensive. All critical systems, regardless of their volume, should be charged with filtered (cleaned) oil. This is at least as justified as aligning the machine prior to commissioning.

Cheers


Mike Johnson, CMRP
mjohnson@amrri.com

Hello Terrence and All,

First, ISO cleanliness of a new oil in drums can change from its point of origin (refinery) to its point of destination or user (company), Remember that the truck with the oil tank carrying the oil will be travelling at a distance, hence, if the ISO oils reading at a refinery is at 16/15/12 it can change to 17/20/18 etc. WHy ? In a 1 square mile of road, in a typical city, there are estimated around 4 metric tons of suspended dirt, and some of them might sneek in into the oil, remember what we can only see are contaminants 40 microns and above and the smaller once will aint be visible to the naked eye.

How to address this situation ?

A good practice is to use an offline filtration and using this to transfer your oil into its application or machine. Use an absolute high beta filtration system, Beta 200 or more with say 3 micron rating or less. These will take away the contaminants present in the oil.

Most people assume that new oil is clean oil, WRONG assumption, they are not synonymous. For those interested I have a training materials in this at the sales portion and it offers so much information regarding this matter.

Hence, if you try to get a sample of oil from your new drum and place them in a clear glass, stir it and look for any contaminants, if you cannot see anything dont assume that it is clean, perhaps the contaminants are so small to your naked eye just cannot see them. Place your new oil in a scope and use a scope with 100x magnification.

Regards,

Rolly Angeles

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Rolly12,

I agree with offsite filtration before disntribution to individual machines.

Where may I ask is the best sampling point for new 55 gal drums of oil? Will it make a difference how long the oil sat as far as where to take the sample?

Maybe Mike Johnson remembers me saying at the Noria seminar I attended and he ran that the state of N.C. Dept. of Ag. tests bulk oil deliveries in their state and found 82% to be contaminated with something. Oil in drums has a great chance of being contaminated if the drums are re-used by the lube blender ( many are ). Too hard to clean them thoroughly so nice lube makers only use new drums every time. Filter it in and don't forget OilSafe and GreaseSafe. Clean-Cool-Dry lubes work best.