Lubrication is essential, but it may be a difficult task. How often should you grease your machine? Is the atmosphere damp or dry, hot or cold, clean or filthy? How quickly does the machinery move? Technicians must address these and other issues before establishing a proper lubrication program.
Lubrication is one of the most important factors in ensuring the uptime of your plant and equipment. Each facility can implement key procedures to improve equipment dependability. The lubrication best practices listed below can assist organizations in achieving the optimum maintenance cost-to-reliability ratio.
1. Benchmark Assessment
Benchmarking is the process of determining what the best level of performance is in a particular organization, a certain program, or completely other industry.
2. Labeling
A labeling system ensures that technicians apply the correct lubricant to each piece of equipment. Large facilities use many different types of lubricants, and because these fluids are complex chemical compositions that are often incompatible, a proper labeling system helps prevent mixing errors and meets industry requirements, especially in the food-grade sector.
3. Cleanliness Management
Oil contamination often causes component wear and equipment failure. Therefore, technicians should use only clean lubricants. Cleanliness-control centers keep lubricants safe, clean, and moving in a contamination-free environment.
The following are some of the best techniques for maintaining cleanliness:
- Only utilize containers that are completely sealed.
- Large ontainers should have air breathers installed to prevent the intrusion of moisture and pollutants from the atmosphere.
- Filter oil to ensure that it is completely clean before use.
- Use only contamination-free containers, that is, containers that are not exposed to contaminants and not used as a container for other chemicals beforehand.
4. Lubricant Dispensing
Contamination might enter the equipment through open and filthy dispensing containers. Dispensing equipment must be safe, clean, and closed. It should also work effectively, be easy to use, and suit the specific applications. Clearly label all containers to prevent mistakes, no matter who uses them.
5. Lubrication Equipment
The bulk of lubrication duties involves adding grease to a machine. As a result, having effective and practical tools is crucial. To guarantee that the proper lubrication gets into the right application, grease guns should be color-coded. In this case, color-coded grease guns with one color for each type of grease can be useful.
6. Contamination Management
It’s also crucial to keep oil pollution out of the equipment. ISO 4406 is the worldwide standard for measuring this. Oil is cleaned using online and offline filtration devices, while the lubricant is protected using breathers or air conditioners.
7. Oil Analysis
An essential aspect of a lubrication strategy is to analyze the oil in an application. The oil can be kept at the proper cleanliness levels by measuring against ISO 4406 criteria. A chemical study of the oil will also establish if it is suitable for future usage.
8. Information Management
Information management is becoming increasingly important in business today, particularly in the maintenance sector. Maintenance employees must understand the benefits of effective lubrication practices. Additionally, as reliability-based maintenance gains recognition, training should expand to include the dependability practices used by best-practice firms.
CRE’s Lubrication Program Development
Building and optimizing your lubrication program is not an easy task. Apart from the difficulty in consolidating your program, building your process, and identifying where to start, you also have to contend with culture change. Noria, a CRE Philippines partner, created a comprehensive lubrication program that includes a thorough strategy for all lubrication-related work processes and procedures. With Lubrication Program Development (LPD) we will assist you in determining how much your plant’s inadequate lubrication procedures cost each year. From benchmarking, building a business case, to training your team, we will also be helping your team build a culture of lubrication excellence that is sustainable and effective.