Calibrating grease guns

You said it.

weight a piece of plastic, pump 10 shots of grease on it, weight again, deduct the initial plastic, and divide by 10.

Suggest to use grams instead of ounces for more accuracy. Each pump might be around 2 grams. Please let me know the outcome of your evaluation.
You are right on target for not overlubricating.

We feel elsewise - khowing thw qty help to conserve - but Ultrasonic technology is better than measured qty - if you really want to ensure proper lubrication of the bearing.

there is a company called uvlm and one more having this product (noria has a mention some where) - worth the effort and money. TRY IT....

Hi Terry,
I do not agree ultrasonic is the only way to go. It tells you when the grease has reached the ball contact surface but nothing else. Use a grease meter mounted on your gun. Trico (US) or Esko Pacific Sales (Canada) can help you. We are living in the year of 2007!

People

We performed a procedure to calibrate our grease guns. We had manual (2.7 Kg of grease) and pneumatic guns (20 Kg of grease).

We prepared a stainless tubing 1/8" diameter, 5" long, with a grease valve at the end, and we pumped the grease. We found that in the pneumatic gun, each pump is 9.5 gr of grease, and in the manual gun, each pump is 2.7 gr of grease.

There are several ways to determine the exactly qty of grease for avoid overlubricating.


Regards

The previous discussions have focused on the differences between greasing a volume or using ultrasonic aids.
The disadvantage with meassuring the volume with a grease gun is that the points will in average be overgreased! Using a grease meter this can be corrected.
The spokesmen for the ultrasonic method clame that they know when to stop. Yes, but they do not know when to start! See http://www.assalub.com/luberight.asp?lang=eng for a better solution.
Par

quote:

Originally posted by parolof:
The previous discussions have focused on the differences between greasing a volume or using ultrasonic aids.
The disadvantage with meassuring the volume with a grease gun is that the points will in average be overgreased! Using a grease meter this can be corrected.
The spokesmen for the ultrasonic method clame that they know when to stop. Yes, but they do not know when to start! See http://www.assalub.com/luberight.asp?lang=eng for a better solution.
Par

I think you misunderstand the use of ultrasonic instruments. It not only indicates when to stop but if the piece of equipment even needs to be re-lubricated in the first place. No matter how well you measure how much grease is installed in a lube session you have no idea exactly how much was needed at the start (to replace how much was lost between intervals).

Bottom line here is a proper lubrication. Using a grease gun over lubrication is not only the problem, nobody mention about under lubrication. That is between relubrication interval where under lubrication occur also at this time contaminants penetrate. Using automatic lubricator like Memolub can solve this over and under greasing, it maintains the grease in ideal level all the time. Memolub ejects grease very often but in very small amount. Because contaminations and poor greasing are eliminated the bearing will have a long life the benefits are savings of spare parts, cost of repairs and continuous operation plus the safety of personnel and hygienic environment.

There are some potential problems with manual lubrication. Number one is forgotten greasing points and number two over greasing. The problem with the ultrasonic method is that it does not solve the first problem. As I said earlier; you do not know when to start, and if you are late the bearing might have been damaged already.
The LubeRight method is usually used in the process industry with a large number of greasing points. With new grease qualities greasing intervals are extended and then you are not allowed to miss a single point. In these industries vibration monitoring is conducted on a continuous bases.