Machinery Lubrication

Machinery Lubrication Mar Apr 2013

Machinery Lubrication magazine published by Noria Corporation

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Lubricant Storage and Handling BACK PAGE BASICS WES CASH NORIA CORPORATION When to USE HARD-PIPE Lubricant DISPENSING In all the plants I have visited, the lubrication systems that seem to save the most time and labor for their maintenance personnel are machines that are hard-piped to either a large bulk oil tank or a large oil tote. While piping machines into a lube source isn't a new concept, it is one that is rarely seen in practice. Usually you find these types of systems employed at places like power plants with large turbine systems that hold thousands of gallons of oil, but they can be used for countless other applications as well. Piping supply lines to machines makes sense in several situations. For instance, in many refineries there are countless rows of Piping to a common lube oil tank greatly reduces the amount of labor required for an oil change and can save as much as 90 percent of the labor costs. pumps all using the same lubricant. Since these pumps are stationary and typically operated 24 hours a day, they would be good candidates to be hard-piped together to a large oil tank. 54 | March - April 2013 | www.machinerylubrication.com Piping to a common lube oil tank greatly reduces the amount of labor required for an oil change and can save as much as 90 percent of the labor costs when compared to the storage and handling of oil drums. 60% of plants have machines that are hard-piped to a large bulk oil tank or a large oil tote, based on a recent poll at machinerylubrication.com Another situation in which piping a machine to a lube oil tank could be advantageous is when a machine or component has a high oil consumption rate. I have seen some machines leak as much as 300 gallons of oil per week. All of this oil is reclaimed, the machine is taken out of commission, and then new oil is added until it is cleared to be returned to service. In these types of scenarios, having a direct line to a bulk oil tank not only would reduce the labor costs associated with handling drums but would also greatly decrease the amount of time the machine is out of service. When looking at the cost of an oil change, the oil usually accounts for only a small percentage of the total cost, while the cost of downtime or lost production due to the machine being out

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