What kind of ISO cleanliness level does new oil show? I'm curious what you've seen with oils you get in the five gallon pails. I'm not in a postion to have our ISO 32 and 68 pails tested and our plant manager won't spend the $$$. The oil we use is an R&O from the clamshell logo guys. Is one brand cleaner than the rest? Thanks for your inputs.

New oil right out of the drum is not synonymous to clean oil, it is a good practice to filter out the oil or to use a filter cart in transfering oil from the container to the system. A dual filtration system will be suited for this application, one will remove the contaminants depending upon the efficiency and beta rating of the filter selected and the other will remove dissolved water.

I realize the need for additional filtering. I'm just looking for some ISO #'s from anybody who has tested new oil in 5 gallons pails. If you have some ISO #'s please let me know what you've found. Thanks!!

There is no patern that could be used to distinguish various oils based on their cleanliness. However, you can get new oil at whatever cleanliness level you want, but it will cost some additional $, as oil would be additionally filtrered in blending facility before being packaged.

In direct response to your question, I have tested new ISO #46 'clam-shell logo'd' R&O oil from a new 5 gallon pail, but have only done this once out of curiosity. The results of this particular sample was 17/15/12. Pretty clean for new oil, but bare in mind any other given pail may not be this clean. I would not bank on the cleanliness remaining consistent.

Hi Penman,

as said before new oil could be from an ISO 4406 16/13 up ISO 4406 20/16, (300 to 10,000 particles per ml > 5 µm)
If we can maintain our lubricant better than ISO 16/13,
at the lab we cant find any significant wear debris to show you.
Direct from the blending plant in plastic drums should be clean it but is up the you to check so sample and particle count all your suppliers and pick any that are an ISO 17/14 or Cleaner.

Regards Rob S

I just sampled some of our unfiltered new oil. Without mentioning the major oil supplier the results were as follows:
Grade 68 Hydraulic Oil ISO 17/13/9
Grade 32 Turbine Oil ISO 17/14/10
Grade 68 Circulating Oil ISO 20/18/14
Grade 150 Synthetic Bearing Oil ISO 20/18/15
Grade 460 Synthetic Bearing Oil ISO 18/14/10

Sorry about the "old" ISO numbers but that's what I get from the lab. The numbers are 4/6/14um. As you can see they numbers vary considerably so we filter everything.