June 05, 2006
Oil Analysis Costs Too Much
By Brett Winberg LubeTalk Newsletter (Subscribe here)
“Why oil sample?.. it costs too much!” After some debate about the advantages of what can be achieved by oil analysis, most end users of oil analysis determine that a few dollars spent towards maintenance and condition monitoring is much better than a downtime problem that could cost thousands.
That’s not really all that uncommon in today’s safeguarding environments, however the challenge is getting timely oil analysis implemented… and adopted by everyone on the maintenance team.
There are many types of oil analysis tests that can be run to help determine “Root Cause Failure” of your equipment. It all depends on what type of “maintenance concept” you are trying to achieve for your organization. Basically, there are four types of maintenance concepts that most of us use:
Unplanned Maintenance:
a. Very high maintenance cost
b. Short component life
c. No time for failure analysis
Preventive Maintenance:
a. Moderately high maintenance cost
b. Over and under maintained equipment
c. Short component life
Predictive Maintenance:
a. Reduced maintenance cost
b. Increase production
c. Increased component life
Proactive Maintenance:
a. Root cause analysis guides your maintenance action.
b. Reduces the number of breakdowns
c. Tending to develop unique component history
The main reason for performing oil analysis testing is to improve the quality of equipment and machinery maintenance decisions. Without this data, we run in the “Unplanned Maintenance” zone and spend more money repairing machinery and equipment that usually could have been detected by oil sampling.
There are basically three categories of oil analysis testing:
Wear Metal Debris Analysis
Fluid Properties (Oil condition)
Contamination
To run your company to a “Proactive” level of maintenance, usually involves doing all three tests as a necessity. But most of all, the Fluid Properties and Contamination categories are the most commonly used tests. This way you can determine if the oil is safe for continued use and what environmental elements are entering into the equipment’s vital components.
These are a few common tests to include in your program, that are used by today’s leading manufacturers:
1-TAN = Total Acid Number
2-TBN = Total Base Number
3-Particle Count
4-Viscosity
5-FTIR = Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy
6-Analytical Ferrography
7-Ferrous Density
For more information, call toll-free 1.866.LUBETRAK (1.866.582.3872)
