www.machinerylubrication.com | March - April 2022 | 25
ML
ML ML
boxes that I keep on hand because they are hard to find, an
oil fog being maintained inside the headspace can protect
those surfaces.
e mist and fog we need to worry about is the stuff
we aren't generating on purpose. Oil is really good about
START YOUR
FREE SUBSCRIPTION
www.machinerylubrication.com
sticking to stuff for the most part, so
if I have a reservoir that has an open
breather and it keeps generating a bit of
mist, I will likely see indicators of this
(as long as I know what I am looking at),
like dust settling and sticking to the oil
on top of the reservoir.
e mist is causing a bit of house-
keeping, so what? What happens if I
am maintaining the headspace in that
reservoir? e oil is going to permeate
the filter media and either plug a spin-on
filter or coat the desiccant and prevent
it from doing its job. So that little bit
of mist could end up causing moisture
accumulation in the headspace and oil,
or it could create a situation where the
reservoir won't breathe at all.
If the reservoir needs to breathe and
can't, something else somewhere in that
system is going to give. It might be a seal
somewhere, control valves, or it could be
that the machine goes into a safe mode
and just shuts itself down. None of these
situations are going to help production
or reliability. So, the next time you
walk past a reservoir, gearbox, hydraulic
system or pump and you see that bit of
dust that always settles in the same spots,
or worse yet, actual mist coming out of
the breather, take a minute to figure out
why this is happening and what can you
do to fix it. ML
Jeremie Edwards is an
A ssociate Technical
Consultant at Noria
Corporation. He is
one of an elite few
certified by the International Council
for Machinery Lubrication (ICML) as
a Machinery Lubrication Engineer
(MLE) and did so in order to become
the best advisor for clients when it
comes to their continuing education
needs. Before joining Noria, Jeremie
served six years in the U.S. Army as a
parachute rigger and was deployed in
Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Turkey and
G er m a ny. C ont a c t Jere m ie at
jedwards@noria.com