When I first started with condition monitoring in the early 1990s on an open cast iron ore mine, we were blessed to have a geology laboratory to utilize for used oil analysis. In addition, we had the support of a commercial laboratory to whom we could send samples to...
Lubricant Analysis
How Lubricant Selection Impacts Degradation and Machine Failure
Many lubrication engineers are faced with finding the most appropriate lubricant for an application. Therefore, they are tasked with selecting the "right" lubricant; subsequently, their decision can influence several outcomes. A lot of the positive results are in the...
Why Your Maintenance Management Needs to Embrace Data Integration
Data, data, and more data. Our industry feeds on data to make decisions, and there's an abundance of condition monitoring tools that allow us to use data to understand the health of operating equipment and detect potential risks of failures. Utilizing core equipment...
The Elusive Acid Number: What Does It Really Mean?
The Acid Number of a lubricant, sometimes called the "Total Acid Number" or TAN, is a commonly reported value for oil analysis and is generally considered an indication of oil aging and degradation. But what does it mean, and how is it determined? Let's break down...
Oil Cleanliness: Why Tiny Particles are Every Machine’s Worst Foe
Is the lubricant circulating through your system free from damage-causing contaminants? Using contaminated lubricants can lead to irreversible equipment damage, shortened life, and unexpected downtime. Instances of contamination can be identified by inspecting the...
How ASTM Standards Set the Foundation for Lubricant Condition Monitoring
The foundation of a lubricant condition monitoring program is the ability to obtain accurate and informative data that can be related to how the machine and lubricant may fail. In the past ten years, many industrial advances have significantly impacted the lubricant...
How Oil Sampling Makes Maintenance Predictable and Effective
Like other condition monitoring techniques, oil analysis is vital in monitoring equipment health and maintaining performance. It aims to detect underlying root causes of failure and early-stage potential failures before they cause significant damage. Oil sampling is...
Reducing Costs, Increasing Production: The Remarkable Impact of Predictive Maintenance
Throughout my years in the maintenance and lubrication industry, I've seen maintenance strategies evolve from reactive, to proactive, to preventive, to now moving their way to predictive. As we move towards the future, we're seeing companies move toward a predictive...
How Reliable and Accurate is the Crackle Test for Oil Analysis?
Why The Most Popular Oil Analysis Test Ever Might Actually Be the Worst Over the years, oil analysis has gone from something adopted by just a few asset owners with critical components to a universal tool to achieve reliability. As oil analysis entered the...
Oil Analysis Blunders: How to Avoid Mistakes in Sample Identification
Lubricants are the lifeblood of machines. Like a blood test, lubricant analysis can provide early warnings of impending failures, far in advance, before it is too late to take timely action. But not all oil samples can give such alerts completely! Only representative...