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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Rolly Angeles:
John,
My last work was in a Mining firm before I put up my own organization, our monthly lubrication cost was around $ 50,000.00 , but that was nothing our spare cost and overhauling damages such as hydraulic pumps amount to 4 times the cost of lubricants, not to mention other mechanical parts such as bearing seals etc.
In my study in this mining firm the equipment damages and lubricant cost far outweights the total cost of an in-house lab hence management approved it.
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Mr Angeles,
you are 100% correct. In my opinion, every industry possesing some hydraulic machines must have a little laboratory with some essential testing equipments, like (A)Viscosity gauge (allowable Error 2%),(B)Hot Plate for Water crackle test,(C) Karl Fischer Equipment for moisture (D)some cheap digital equipment for moisture detection ,(E) TAN testing kit,(F) Laser Particle counter or (G)Millipore Patch Test Kit with one microscope.
You may have First option [A+B+ (C or D) + E + F]
or you may have second option [A+B+ (C or D) +E+ G]
The total cost of option 1 will be 16,000 USD and for second option it will be 2,300 USD in India.
Just one semi skilled person with little proper training will be able to handle all these equipments successfully.His duty will be to take out oil samples at regular intervals from every machine, test it with all the above equipments and keep a record of all the results. This will certainly give a good idea of the condition of oil and machines to the management. Then it will be easier to make them understand that oil should be kept clean and free from moisture and its TAN within allowable limits. Naturally with this mindset they will be ready to buy the oil purifying systems, which they are reluctant to buy now, thinking it to be unnecessary expense. Keeping the oil superclean will certainly increase the life of their machine components, will reduce breakdowns and maintenance budget.
They should be encouraged to go for such small oil testing labs at their place, once they are habituated of talking about the cleanliness of oil, they will be ready to send their oil samples to more sophisticated labs for advanced testing.May be they make a schedule of testing oil of every machine after every 500 hours in house and sending the sample to advanced lab after every 1500 or 2000 hours, this duration may be fixed keeping in view the finance available.
ROI can be calculated to convince the management, it will help to save lot of oil as the change period may increase. If the management buys a proper filtration system, this small lab will certainly convince the management of enormous benefits accruing from keeping oil clean.