Despite the good intentions of many organizations, real improvements in contamination control often remain an elusive concept. They know that invisible particles are one of the largest single contributors to progressive wear of machinery. Yet with each passing year, no significant enhancements in maintenance practices resulting in greater fluid cleanliness are implemented. With today’s selection of IoT fluid monitoring systems and free, practical advice for contamination control practices, no plant should let contamination run rampant any longer.

After all, being “generally clean” does not result in incremental reliability improvements. Only higher levels of cleanliness accomplish this. No improvement in contamination control means no reduction in particle-induced machine wear and failure. Unlike invisible particles, a failed machine in need of repair is a tangible task with an immediate tangible result; that is, the machine returns to operation. Yet, most of us have been taught that problem solving (reactive maintenance) should always be subordinate to problem prevention (proactive maintenance). It’s amazing how knowing is often not doing.

The post Contamination Control Strategies for Planned Oil Cleanliness appeared first on Tesibis.

For years Noria has been saying, “The cost of excluding a gram of dirt is probably only about 10 percent of what it will cost you once it gets into your oil.” Recently, a Noria training client asked us to document proof of this statement.

It reminds me of a widely used quote from Benjamin Franklin: “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” Or another familiar one: “Pay me now or a whole lot more later.” Proactively investing in reliability and machine wellness is very often challenged by the need to justify. Management is always asking for financial analysis and to “make the business case.”

Conversely, a financial study rarely is produced to obtain funds to repair a failed machine, especially when plant production has stalled. Sadly, I’ve heard maintenance folks say that they’ve quit trying to propose proactive measures to management. They claim it’s easier to just let the machines fail.

This is like saying it’s easier to just wait until you have a heart attack than to proactively make the lifestyle changes needed to avoid heart disease (diet, fitness, quit smoking, etc.). These differences are often deeply ingrained in management and business culture. Does your organization have the “here and now” folks or those who “plan and prepare?”

On the bright side, an increasing number of companies are led by managers who do “get it.” Much of this has been driven by the growing base of documented success stories from organizations and program leaders who have championed change and happily reported their results. They didn’t need to be beaten over the head but rather took the initiative and captured the benefit.

The post Justifying the Cost of Excluding a Gram of Dirt [the economics of controlling contaminant ingression) appeared first on Tesibis.

Users of hydraulic equipment need to know how clean their fluid should be. The information and procedure for determining this has not been readily available in the past. This has been largely due to the many factors· that impinge on the decision. This paper introduces a new· system called the Contaminant Life Index (figure 1) which deals with this question head on. The Contaminant Life Index addresses each of the many issues involved in determining required system cleanliness. These factors are presented in a simple, easy to follow format. The CLI delineates only the most salient criteria with the objective to span the numerous diverse types of hydraulic equipment in use.

The post Quantifying The Contaminant Tolerance of Hydraulic Systems Using the Contaminant Life Index appeared first on Tesibis.

To some contamination control might seem a little like an old tune. After all, hasn’t filtration been around nearly as long as lubrication? And, what’s new that hasn’t already been thoroughly explored and widely applied? For one, when it comes to cleanliness, knowing is definitely not doing. Many maintenance professionals know oil should be clean but the use of filtration and contamination control lacks rigor and discipline. Why? Hidden behind steel plates, within the dark interior of our machine, the particles of dirt move about like a microscopic wrecking crew–invisible to the outside world. Even within a sample bottle they are too small to see. The dirt effectively is “out of sight” and therefore, usually also, “out of mind.” People don’t respond to what they don’t see. As in most cases, embedded in the problem one finds the solution, or rather, opportunity. Simply stated, how do we turn the unseen into the seen?

For many world class organizations, when it comes to battling invisible particles, the preferred weapon is the invisible filter- a.k.a., the particle counter. Why is a particle counter called an invisible filter? Because it has the remarkable ability to change behavior. The old saying, “what gets measured gets done” says it well. Everything else left the same, the frequent use of a particle counter, with conspicuous reporting of results, often leads to an amazing downward trend in contamination.

Why? Because people are reacting to the feedback, by slowly altering past practices. When combined with education, little things and big things alike are done differently. For instance, greater care and attention is given to lubricant storage, cleanliness of oil cans and top-up containers is controlled, transfer systems are fitted with filters, tank hatches are sealed tightly, and breathers and filters are serviced regularly. In sum, the best filter is the unneeded filter, the invisible filter, the particle counter. So, take the time to learn from the experience of others and develop a plan to emulate proven successes. To the astute, opportunity-seeking student of machine reliability, there are very few lessons so important. Class dismissed.

The post Deploying the Invisible Filter appeared first on Tesibis.

Process plants and manufacturing companies have machinery lubricated by mineral-based or synthetic fluids and other machinery powered by lower viscosity hydraulic fluids. We define equipment of this type as fluid-dependent systems. Examples of this include gear boxes, process pumps, gas compressors, speed reducers, blowers, hydraulic metal working machines and machine tools.

When machines have wear, corrosion and associated problems that eventually lead to corrective action, we categorize these problems as internal state failures. Often, equipment operates infrequently, under very low loads, and away from the main production processes. In such cases, it may be perfectly acceptable to operate this equipment with scheduled maintenance activities or simply on a breakdown basis.

The post Establishing and Maintaining Levels of Cleanliness [in Lubricants] appeared first on Tesibis.

Water in a hydraulic system constitutes a serious form of oil contamination. However, water contamination is rarely recognized as such, hardly understood, and, until recently, considered difficult to combat. The damage caused by water is usually attributed to other causes. Water often interacts with other types of contamination. It causes both degradation of the hydraulic oil and damage to the hydraulic components, which reinforce each other. In the past, the filtration of hydraulic oil was solely aimed at removing solid particles. The hydraulic industry has therefore made great progress over the last twenty years in applying and maintaining well-designed filtration of solid particles from hydraulic oil. However, the recent introduction of water-removing filters seems destined to shift the focus in the management of hydraulic oil contamination.

The post Filtering water from hydraulic oil appeared first on Tesibis.

Here is the latest component for hydraulic system filtration and contamination control Water is a very serious contaminant in oil hydraulic systems. Yet, water contamination is rarely identified, poorly understood, and, until recently, considered very difficult to remove. In most cases, the damage done by water is blamed on other factors. Water often works together with other contaminants to produce a combined synergistic degradation of fluid and components.

In the past, hydraulic filtration processes were designed to separate solid contaminants from the hydraulic fluid and, over the last 20 years, the hydraulics industry has made great progress in implementing and maintaining well-conceived solid-contaminant filtration on hydraulic equipment. However, the recent introduction of water-removing filters appears destined to change the focus of fluid power contamination control.

The post Filters can Remove Water from Hydraulic Fluid appeared first on Tesibis.

Water in a hydraulic system constitutes a very serious form of oil contamination. Technically, water contamination is rarely recognized as such, poorly understood, and, until recently, considered difficult to combat. The damage caused by water is usually attributed to other causes. Water often interacts with other types of contamination. It causes both degradation of the hydraulic oil and damage to the hydraulic components, which reinforce each other. In the past, the filtration of hydraulic oil was solely aimed at removing solid particles. The hydraulic industry has therefore made great progress over the last twenty years in the application and maintenance of well-designed filtration systems for solid particles in hydraulic oil. However, the recent introduction of water-removing filters seems destined to shift the focus in the management of hydraulic oil contamination.

The post Filters can remove the water from hydraulic oil appeared first on Tesibis.

Water in a hydraulic system constitutes a very serious contaminant of the oil. Nevertheless, water contamination itself is rarely recognized, poorly understood, and until recently, considered difficult to combat. Sometimes, the damage caused by water is attributed to other types of contamination. Water often interacts with other contaminants, causing both degradation of the hydraulic oil and damage to the hydraulic components, with these effects reinforcing each other. Until now, hydraulic oil filtration has primarily focused on removing solid particles. The hydraulics industry has made significant progress in the application and maintenance of well-designed solid particle filtration systems over the past twenty years. However, the recent introduction of water-separating filters appears poised to shift the focus of oil contamination control.

The post Filters kunnen het water uit hydraulische olie verwijderen (Filters can remove the water from hydraulic oil) appeared first on Tesibis.

Imagine the filter inside your machine is made of fibers the size of telephone poles, stacked randomly in all directions, many layers thick. Each juncture where poles touch is a drop of super glue for support. To emulate actual operating conditions, the stack of poles is placed on a large moving and vibrating table.

Now, imagine that the contaminants inside your oil are lumps of gelatin, clumps of tar, ping-pong balls, marbles, tree branches, powdery sand, beanbags, strips of sheet metal, streams of honey, wet rags and beach balls. To begin our example, suppose that you had large containers of these different contaminants beside you as you perch on top of scaffolding hovering above the stack of telephone poles.

The post How Filters Work to Control Contamination in Oil appeared first on Tesibis.

Filtration has two primary objectives. The first objective is “protective”. This refers to creating a barrier to protect particle-sensitive machine components from the invasion of contaminants capable of causing sudden-death machine failure. Machines that have high mission criticality from the standpoint of safety, lost production and/or repair cost are good candidates for protective filtration. Such filters are located just upstream of sensitive components. Many components don’t require wear in order to fail, but they can experience critical loss of performance due to motion impediment and/or flow blockage caused by the intrusion of particles of a particular size and composition. Servo-controlled electro-hydraulic valves are examples of such components that benefit from protective filtration.

The post Increasing Demands Bring Advancements in Oil Filtration appeared first on Tesibis.

The field of maintenance technology going through a revolution of change. Gone are the t days when a machine had a predictable service life, after which it was replaced, continuing the cycle. Today, machinery and equipment can be maintained to achieve useful operating lives many times that attainable just a few years ago.

In the past, the popular practice of predictive maintenance and condition monitoring to combat rising maintenance costs. In the 1990s, we implement predictive maintenance with greater confidence and precision. These early warnings have proven effective at reducing the magnitude of failure and amount of unscheduled downtime; however, no real progress has been made in reducing frequency. Any maintenance strategy targeting the reduction of failure frequency must address the fundamental causes of failure. Such a strategy of eliminating causes would be “proactive” to failure, not “reactive” to failure.

This approach, known as proactive maintenance, is a promising wave of new maintenance technology. Its fundamental and logical approach seeks to make major inroads into the cost-driven maintenance industry this decade.

The post Proactive Maintenance the Cost-Reduction Strategy appeared first on Tesibis.