Can ferrography work as a good condition monitoring technique to evaluate machine degradation, without spectrometry?

Dear Durante,

this all depends on your objectives. Something is better than nothing but usually Ferrography should be used to supplement spectroscopy. Ferrography wont work unless there are feromagnetic particles in the in-service oil. The spectroscopy will answer the what-else is there. Also please remember these two techniques are good companions because spectroscopy will not see anything larger than 10 um and Ferrography will not see anything smaller than 1 um. Both incomplete apart, better together.

Further to spectroscopy see; http://www.practicingoilanalysis.com/article_detail.asp?articleid=287
ro: http://www.noria.com/learning_center/category_article.a...bookgroup=WearDebris

Further to Ferrography see: http://www.noria.com/learning_center/category_article.a...ookgroup=OilAnalysis

Further to Ferrography, Spectroscopy, and particle counting.

Good luck

Is it possible for certain oils to show higher wear metals using spectroscopy, but not be severe or what is normally considered high wear?

Tests in isolation from each other are not the best value.(best to have a specific suite for your application and requiements)
In diagnosing of sample results all tests results should be considered and can be related.
In my experience, the most reliable results are from the ICP, so I would condsider this the starting point, all be it you will see no particles greater than 7 to 10 microns.
Direct reading ferrography is a good tool for ferrous wear and failure modes using DL and DS
in simple ratios to highlight problems.