Guys,
We have recently had a mate asked to join our team as lubrication 'tech'. We asked for a specific person who had proved himself over the years as resourceful, conciencious, and practical. When lubrication is left to process or maintenance techs, it doesn't get done. He has already discovered plugged oiler pipes, wrong oil levels and loose fittings. On his recommendation we have thrown out our old grease guns and bought more expensive but more reliable guns.
Although it is not a difficult job to do, it is crucial that you have a trustworthy person,as he will generally work on his own, and the consequences of the work affect reliability.
Regards,
Joe Mc Cormack

Good point Joe. Hang on to him - he's a commodity.
In scouting we use to call that type of guy "the billy scrubber."
The right attitude - willing to tackle anything with a positive attitude and make a project out of it.

Mike.

quote:

Josh, I like iso audits, the internal ones I classify as funny (finger pointing clan, paper maniacs), although they are learning fast.
The external ones I see like a challenge, it forces you to think ahead.

But, I have a vague suspicion that Terry wants to get this site ISO - certified and hired you to do the audit.
Is that correct?

Steven

No worries about me seeking ISO certification! Have you ever seen my office?

Terry O

Hiring from South America is cheaper because of the geography!

Hmm.. Josh you give me some ideas, maybe I can make some money on Tuesday..

There is a lot of interest on this topic if the number of comments on the thread suggests anything.

A few more.... In my humble and lowly opion...

Plants should have dedicated and TRAINED lubrication personnnel, working for a specific supervisor, and should have a job scope that is much more comprehensive than simply " oil'n an'grease'n ".

Relibility centered (precision) lubrication is a combination of lubricant selection, lubricant re-supply, in-situ lubricant care (fancy term for contamination control), lubricant sampling and analysis, and follow-on service work based on the analysis results. There are other things too, but this is a good start.

The body of knowledge is VERY BIG! It is not reasonable to expect a new hire, or a production person to arrive with enough intuition to be able to know what to do unless the person has a strong background in the topic that has included a lot of training.

As mechanical folks we are prone to think, since we changed the oil under dad's elbow in the family buick many years ago, and did it without spilling any lubricant or making dad mad, that we know all we need to know just by being mechanically inclinded. This is definately not the case, although understanding the mechanical part is, in my opinion, the hard part.

Without clearly devised job plans, and specific knowledge on how to complete the plans, and specific timing to assure that it is done at a proper interval, the general mechanic or operator is likely to get distracted, over-tasked, and drug off into other things time and time again. Regardless of his/her intention, my experience reinforces my conviction that lubrication is simply under-valued, over-looked and prone to neglect UNLESS someone is tasked for this alone, and has a high degree of accountabilty from a senior management position.

My feelings are that:
1. There should be an engineer/supervisor that is tasked with comprehensive lubrication based practices management.
2. This supervisor should have a dedicated staff (lube technicians) with a budget to educate and train the staff.
3. The staff a should have a broad mechanical bacground, understand computers and technology (were are going there very quickly), should be a self-starter, and should be expected to complete routine tasks, inspect machines and solve problems.
4. A concerted effort should be placed on contamtion control, effective sample collection and doing somthing with the information that is derived through analysis. This means simple, but important, machine modifications to facilitate sealing out and removing contaminants from both grease and oil.

The pass rate for the ICML Level 1 exam delivered at public seminars is much lower than most folks would expect. We simply don't know what we don't know.

Best regards,

Mike Johnson, CMRP
mjohnson@amrri.com

Agree - I'm all for pushing society to recognise lubrication as more than just second fiddle to the mechanic.
Without an anethetist to support the surgeon the patient would die - so who do you rate as being more important - but who gets all the glory?

Mike.

Hello,

At our plant they did away with the Oiler/Lubricator long ago. The people responsible for Lube on our Critical Equipment are the Specific Machine Specialists or Overhaul Mechanics with the Response Mechanics taking care of the minor equipment lubrication.

Bring this old string back to life.

Let me know if I'm on the right track.

Without oiler/lubricators, ours left several years ago, how does one determine when to change the oil? You can't change everything as much as you'd like to. You can't sample everything, cost $20 to check $4 worth of oil.

I've been checking into mineral/synthetic oil life expectancies and found out it depends on who you talk to. OEM recommendations (from 30-50 years ago) are expensive to maintain, both in the cost of oil and man hours. Imagine what could happen... drains left open, wrong oil put back in or even changing out oil on a piece of equipment that hasn't ran since the last oil change.

Here's the #1 rule that I apply. What do you do?

1. Temperature, not time or operating hours has a larger impact on shortening the life span of the oil and requiring a change out.

NOTE: The rule I use.

For every 17F above 160F (or 150?) shortens oxidation life by 1/2. Expected life span = 12K - 16K hours. Near the end of life the oil will appear darker, viscosity and oxidation will increase. Acid level @2% is deemed failed.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: CBM Novice,

CBMN,

Thanks for bringing up this important topic again. I generally agree with your premise that oils subjected to greater temperatures typically will require more frequent oil changes. However, I believe that the Arrhenius Equation (1/2 the life for each 10 deg C rise or 17 deg F rise) is the most overused and most misunderstood rule of thumb of lubrication. The Arrhenius Equation applies to reaction rates, and is a way to calculate the effect of increasing temperature on the rate coefficient. However, even in pure chemical reaction kinetics, this calculation is not an absolute, and many factors contribute to overall changes in reaction times (and thus, in the reaction rate of oil oxidation). There is an excellent article available online from Machinery Lubrication magazine by Michael Khonsari and Dick Booser. Although I've seen it in many lubrication articles, and it is frequently flashed up on screens in conference PowerPoint's, this article may make you think twice before accepting as fact that the oil life is halved for every 10 deg C increase in temperature.

While it may not seem to make sense to pay more for oil analysis than the cost of the oil in the machine, I'll argue that logic would only apply if the machine was merely a vessel for your oil. In fact, the oil is there to provide the machine with certain functions, including friction reduction, heat transfer, contaminant removal, corrosion protection, etc. The purpose of oil analysis is not to protect the oil, but to protect the machine. Now if you have a machine where its replacement cost is less than the cost of oil analysis over its lifetime, then definitely you have a run-to-failure machine. However, most machines, even ones with very tiny oil reservoirs, have a replacement cost or loss-of-service cost that far exceeds the cost of an appropriate test slate and frequency oil analysis program. If oil analysis is only being used to time the replacement of the oil, then it is rarely cost effective, and certainly not designed to provide the greatest cost benefit for the sampling and analysis effort. Instead, once the decision is made to obtain oil samples from a given machine, an analysis slate should be established that not only provides information about proper oil changes, but that provides trends on contaminants and machine wear as well. Only then can maximum value be extracted for the sampling and analysis effort.

If oxidation were the only mechanism for oil end of life in machinery, and the temperatures could be closely monitored and compared to oil types and additive packages, as outlined in the above article, then it might be possible to establish appropriate oil change frequencies based on operating temperature. However, most oil reaches end of life because of the accumulation of contaminants, wear debris, loss of additives, and other reasons. If we are monitoring the oil's condition, then we can not only know exactly when the oil needs to be changed, we can also address specific problems more effectively than oil changes. Filtration and removal of contaminants such as particulate and water can be accomplished if we are monitoring oil samples. The unchecked accumulation of these contaminants often initiates or accelerates the oxidation of the oil, and can be as great a contributor (or greater) than lubricant temperature alone.

If you are required to establish time-based oil changes, then typical reservoir temperature should be one of your considerations in establishing those frequencies. But consider saving a representative sample from those oil changes once in a while and getting it analyzed to see how your "guesses" are doing. You may find that you are changing the oil too soon, or changing the oil too late, or perhaps not addressing real root causes in the oil that will ultimately compromise the reliability and life-cycle costs for your machinery. But without experienced lubrication technicians (I prefer that over "oilers"), analysis may be more important than ever for you to ensure the reliability of your oil lubricated equipment. And if you wait until the oil turns dark, the damage has usually already been done.

Rich Wurzbach
Maintenance Reliability Group, LLC
Certified Lubrication Specialist, STLE

I believe the dilution of the technical expertise of our technicians has to come to stop. I may be old schooled but I believe many aspects of our industries are technical enough that it requires us to have experts or at least compitent technical trades to effectively maintain our operate or ever evolving equipment.
The dilution of our trades expertise will utimately be one of the main down falls of American industry if we do not reverse this trend as soon as possible.
We have just last year raised our Lubrication Technicians responsibilities and the expectations we have for them in there newly defined positions. With this we also raised there pay and so far it has paid off. If our focus is not on the technical aspects of maintaining our equipment then what should our focus be on?

Its a global problem Larry - not just in America. We are now in a global economy which means we are now competing against a fish factory 3000km away to supply our local market.

Mike.

Actually as a further - apparently there is a new green consumer out there starting to look at logistical carbon footprint of products - preferring to buy locally made.

M.

We, Olin Chemical at Charleston, TN, have a full time lubrication technician. The position is responsible for all equipment lubrication routes, collecting and handling of oil samples, and making/implementing lubricant integrity improvements. The position also includes vibration analysis data collection and also some level of interpretation at the point of data collection. We're happy to have this position at our site and believe that it is a critical componenet of equipment reliability.

Perhaps the question should be why are they still around? We used an oiler in the days of oil consumption and leakage. By eliminating consumption and leakage with proper sealing, oil addition was minimized. Changing to synthetic lubricants eliminated frequent oil changes. The constant level oiler was replaced by the bulls eye glasses. Developing a culture for reliability inlcuding doing the job right and including repair quality checks was the main drive for our people to 'obsolete' the oiler position. The Condition Based Monitoring programs - vibration, oil analysis, infrared are done on the appropriate frequency.
The oiler should be transformed into the reliablility lead extolling the values of the improvement and increasing the ownership of the equipment. As a result we all become machinery health practictioners.
For those facilities with oilers. Ask your oiler where the oil consumers/leakers are and how would she/he go about fixing the root cause? If you do not have an oiler, look for the lubricant bottles, cans, jars spread about in your units and your will find the bad actors within a few steps. Skip adding an oiler and go right to finding and fixing the root cause.