Standard Product Description

I don't think you'll find such a Rosetta Stone. For marketing purposes, the appearance of differentiation can be as useful as the real thing. Clouding the obvious similarities helps this line of promotion.

Also, all of the product development folks have their favorite in-house made up bench tests that no one else runs; do they correlate to field performance? We'll never know, since those data aren't public.

Even if you find two products that list the same analyses using the same units, you still can't be sure. I know of exactly one major that makes a corporate-wide effort to only run the most up-to-date ASTM methods and has a program to periodically verify that those methods are being run strictly by the book. Everyone else? You'll find varying levels of compliance. (Oh, the one major that does this started the program as part of a plea deal in a federal court; they got caught fudging results a few decades back.)

Every time I heard the familiar advertizing tag line "No other brand outperforms...",I know I'm supposed to hear "Our crap is the BEST!". But what comes through my ear sounds more like "Every major brand meets the same standard; we're all tied for first place."

JayCS,

you can go to:
1) ASTM 4304: Standard Specification for NEW Turbine Oil
2) ASTM 6158: for NEW Mineral Hydraulic Oil

I think it would be good guidance to evaluating the PDS / TDS

regards,

Nurudin

Dear JayCS,

You are right, many companies, as Lamont rightly says like to release PDS with differing methods. Flash Point is one bone of contention, while COC seems to be the norm, some companies employ PMCC values.

In 1995, while submitting proposal for Russian Steel Plant, I had great difficulty in comparing Russian specs - GOST, as they refer to KV 20 or KV 30 against the KV 40 widely used.

Hussam