Regular analysis of the oil in your plant’s lubrication system provides key insights and reveals potential maintenance issues to remedy before they grow into catastrophes. In this blog post, we'll take a plain-language look into what exactly is tested during a basic oil analysis and what tests can tell you about the health of your machinery.

Performing regular oil analyses on your lubrication system provides valuable insights into the operating levels of your machines and the lubricant running through them. Without proper and consistent analysis, you are leaving the efficiency of your equipment to chance.

Oil analysis is a necessary component in machine health and longevity. Accurate oil analysis can provide valuable information regarding your lubricant’s cleanliness, levels of additives, and degree of wear. Regular oil testing allows you to track trends in data over time, which helps you recognize changes that indicate impending damage or failure is looming.

RelyAssist is partnering with the lubrication experts at LubriSource to bring you top-notch oil sampling you can trust. By relying on professionals to use ultra-clean tools and procedures to properly collect oil samples in your facility, you get oil filtration test results you can count on.

Make informed decisions on your plant’s maintenance processes going forward.

Keeping your lubrication system as free of water as possible is essential to an effective maintenance program. Water is a costly and destructive contaminant that results in premature component wear and accelerated lubricant degradation. Following best practices for storage, along with installing adequate moisture prevention and removal equipment, ensures the water saturation level in your system remains low.

Improper and insufficient industrial lubrication practices lead to equipment failures that cost U.S. businesses as much as $1 trillion per year in lost productivity, costly reactive maintenance, and unscheduled downtime.

Industrial lubricant cleanliness has a direct impact on equipment life and the efficiency of your manufacturing operation. Portable offline oil filtration is a useful decontamination solution for transfer of new fluids into your system, oil recycling, acute contamination treatment, or as part of a scheduled maintenance program. Moreover, equipment such as kidney loop filtering units are put into full-time service and their benefits extended as integrated, permanent solutions. Whether portable or permanent, lubrication maintenance technicians are more commonly relying upon the convenience, effectiveness, and versatility of offline filtration for optimal fluid cleanliness.

They say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and there is perhaps no place that is truer than in the lubrication industry. That's why it's important to learn proper lubricant and oil storage techniques. Though it is sometimes easy to overlook or deem proper storage a low priority, taking a few easy steps now goes a long way in preserving your materials and preventing degradation in the future.

A reliability-based lubrication maintenance strategy requires a well-balanced program of proactive, preventive, predictive, and reactive contamination control measures. No plan, person, or piece of equipment is perfect, but incorporating a few simple techniques into your maintenance schedule can help you stay two steps ahead of equipment failure due to lubrication or filtration contaminants.

“New” doesn’t necessarily equate to “clean” when it comes to industrial oils and lubricants. Even though they may look pure, new oils require special care and handling to detect and avoid contamination.

We talked to Tony Arenas, Operations Manager at Y2K Fluid Power, about new oil practices. Tony gave the type of deeply detailed insights and tips that can only come from extensive professional experience and knowledge. Y2K designs and manufactures a complete line of filtration and fluid conditioning products for removing liquid and solid particulate contamination in hydraulic and lubricating oil systems.