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Justifying an Oil Analysis Program
William Webster, Sales, Lubrication Engineers
A brilliant answer, elegant in its simplicity is your (Q
& A: Invisible Dirt is Dangerous) contained in the same
Lube Tips. However I would reverse the paragraphs.
The dirt you can't see with the naked eye is even more dangerous
than the dirt you can see. The small stuff is often clearance-sized,
meaning that it is just the right size to impede the blood cell-sized
machine surface clearances and cause abrasion and surface fatigue.
Likewise, the small particles remain entrained in the oil for
a long period of time, even with just minimal agitation.
"You usually can't see the dirt in a fluid, whether its
cleanliness is as dirty as an ISO 23/21/18 or as clean as an ISO
14/12/9. Is there really that much difference between the two
extremes?"
Yes! Because of the multipass nature of dirt in a fluid, at ISO
23/21/18, (a measure of the contamination level) a 50-gpm oil
pump will circulate almost 7,000 pounds of abrasive dirt to your
components each year. Conversely, at ISO 14/12/9, the same pump
will deliver just 14 pounds of dirt to the components per year.
All else held equal, the pump in the clean system will last 15
times longer!
Your maintenance manager will understand 7,000 lbs. of dirt,
that would equate to 4 full size pickups loaded with dirt.
Most likely he will immediately connect the dots and realize
that we have had in plant failures which we didn't detect as lube
failures because we waited until a mechanical failure resulted
and ascribed it to that rather than to the "ROOT cause"
lube cleanliness.
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