Drop of knowledge #18

Ecol laboratory – what was happening in June?

1. 1. Grease Thief®: a practical description of the method →
2. 2. Upcoming conferences we are attending: →
3. 3. Element of the month →

1. Grease Thief®: a practical description of the method

Lubricants, like oils, play an important role in ensuring the operational reliability of machinery and equipment. Although oil diagnostics is widely used and well understood today, the potential of lubricant testing is still sometimes underestimated.

Grease Thief® technology comes to the rescue – a comprehensive solution that enables the analysis of lubricants from the standardised sampling stage through to the precise interpretation of results.

This modern approach opens up new diagnostic possibilities and significantly improves the quality of condition monitoring of lubricated components.
 

The 5 key advantages of the Grease Thief® method are:

• 1. Early detection of problems and prevention of failures

  Grease Thief® allows wear, degradation or contamination of the lubricant to be detected at an early stage – before failure occurs.

• 2. Diagnosis based on minimum grease sample

  A minimal sample is all that is needed for a complete analysis – lower costs and convenient collection, even in hard-to-reach areas.

• 3. Full picture of lubricant and component condition

  Testing includes determination of consistency profile, wear particle content, contaminant content, water, FerroQ, FTIR, RDE – providing a complete picture of condition. This provides a complete assessment of lubricant and component condition, rather than just one variable.

• 4. Standardisation and repeatability of tests

  Tests based on ASTM D7718 and D7918 guarantee reproducibility and reliability (crucial especially in quality-certified facilities).

• 5. Ability to analyse hard-to-reach elements

  Possible extraction of grease from gears, bearings and post-failure components. This offers new diagnostic possibilities in areas previously inaccessible to typical methods.

Areas of application for Grease Thief®:

The potential areas of application for Grease Thief® lubricant testing are virtually unlimited and are intended for, among other things:

• pharmaceutical industry (production and research)
• diagnostics for industrial robot drives and joints (all production lines, e.g. automotive, white goods, logistics, electronics)
• wind power (diagnosis of main bearings, blades, generators, pitch and yaw drives), testing of electric motors, valve drives (in the nuclear power, mining and petrochemical industries)
• offshore industry
• arms industry
• food industry
• the lubricants industry – as part of quality control
• automotive industry
• air transport (helicopters and gyroplanes)
• glass industry
• packaging industry

We invite you to read our article – ‘Grease Thief® – a practical description of the method’:

4. Element of the month

Phosphorus (P) – a non-metal, occurring in four allotropic forms: White, red, purple, black. Mainly found as white phosphorus (flammable, toxic) and red (stable).

Phosphorus, alongside nitrogen and potassium, is one of the main macroelements. It is used in the production of fertilizers.

Useage:

👉 In the oil industry, phosphorus compounds are used as lubricant additives. They improve anti-wear and anti-corrosion properties and are a modifier of the coefficient of friction.

👉 Copper-phosphorus solders are used as an additional material for brazing e.g. copper pipes in water and gas installations.

👉 Phosphorus finds its use as an alloying additive in combination with tin and copper to form phosphor bronze. This material is used in the manufacture of worm gears, for example.