How to know if the time is right to have machinery’s grease replacement

The health of one’s equipment’s grease components cannot be determined easily. Most maintenance technicians can say if the components are greased, either based on schedule or based on how it sounds. This means that there is hardly any external sign to show if one’s grease is headed for failure. 

However, there are some problems when one leaves one’s car’s greasing to a specific schedule or on the basis of specific sounds. 

When one greases based on schedule, often one could end up greasing that unit too much, which makes it necessary to ask oneself how much is too much, since greasing too much can have repercussions. In the event one ends up greasing too much, one could end up overlubricating bearings, resulting in the balls or rollers to slide along the race than turning. This churning mechanism could then ultimately bleed the base oil from the grease; what then remains to lubricate the bearing is a thickened grease with little or no lubricating elements. Inadequate lubricating oil will cause excess heat from churning, which will lead to the hardening of grease and the end outcome is bearing failure and equipment downtime.  

Now, if, on the contrary, one is used to greasing based on the sound of the machinery, then this means that one has already starved the component so the damage has already been done. As a result, putting grease in will only quieten the machinery, but the result will still bear failure and equipment downtime. 

In the end, what it shows is that in order to prevent failure and downtime, one needs to monitor the components through regular grease analysis. It is by monitoring the wear and the grease properties that one knows how the grease is holding up. Adding to it, under operation heat, load and external environmental influences can further degrade the properties of the lubricant and its ability to provide lubrication to one's greased equipment. 

This is where Chevron’s products can come in handy.  Chevron greases are designed with improved oxidation stability to provide longer grease life and with anti-wear properties to offer protection to the equipment during the life of the grease.