One of the biggest culprits for letting dirt into hydraulic and oil reservoirs is the air breather. Many systems come with a standard paper media breather with a nominal rating of about 40 microns. This allows the smaller, more destructive particles to get into the system easily. Upgrading a standard breather to a high-efficiency filter is easily done using commercial bayonet adapters and quality synthetic hydraulic filters.

From "Oil Analysis Basics"

Rate-of-change alarms are typically set to measure properties that are being progressively introduced into the oil, such as wear debris. The add rate (change) can be calculated per unit of time, hours, cycles, etc. For example, a 100 ppm increase in iron over a period of 100 operating hours could be stated as one ppm per hour of operation. When the parameter is plotted against time, the rate-of-change (add rate) equals the current slope of the curve.

Unlike level limits, rate-of-change limits ignore the absolute value of the data parameter, emphasizing instead the speed at which the level is changing. Rate-of-change limits are effectively applied to particle counting (unfiltered systems), elemental wear metals, ferrous density, acid number (AN) and RPVOT. It can also be effectively applied to monitor abnormal degradation of additives with elemental and FTIR spectroscopy.

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Gearboxes and bearing housings periodically need a thorough flushing rather than a simple drain and fill. In this article, learn how and when to perform a flush.
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