The importance of lubricants in industrial maintenance

Lubricants are an essential element in the maintenance of your industrial equipment. Choosing the right product makes it possible to extend the life of your machines, to reduce your maintenance costs and, in the long run, to increase the performance of your production line.

How to choose the right lubricant? What place does the occupy lubrication in the maintenance of your equipment? What benefits does the company get from lubrication? Loïc Bébin, Grease Product Manager at FUCHS Lubriant France agreed to answer our questions.

Can you present the FUCHS Lubriant France offer to us?

FUCHS Lubricant France has a very wide range of products: cutting oil, machining oil, heat treatment, heat treatment, deformation product... Our range of products is segmented into different areas according to possible applications, such as, for example, the “maintenance” division. This division includes various product ranges. It contains a large number of oils, each with a specific use (hydraulic reducer, chains, compressors, etc.), aerosols that can be used for all types of applications, and for which I am responsible for developing. In industry, they can be found when used to maintain rotating mechanisms: bearings, plain bearings, chains, reducers, axles, etc.

Product choices are made according to the characteristics of the application and all the constraints that surround it. As far as fats are concerned, they replace oils as soon as the runny appearance is to be avoided. In fact, they are more easily maintained on the mechanism. Depending on the application, a more or less thick fat will be used. This type of lubricant is classified from grade 000, which corresponds to a fairly fluid product, to grades 4 or 5, which are much more consistent. A grade 2 consistency grease is used more for standard applications and a grade 3 grease can be used for example on fans or a vertical shaft without it leaking.

Here too, there is a great diversity of applications: from the cement industry to the food sector, including the automotive sector or the steel industry - one of the largest consumers of these fats. For each maintenance problem that may be encountered in a factory, FUCHS Lubriant France offers one or more products capable of responding to them.

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Finally, as soon as a raw material is transformed into a finished product, by human intervention, there will be a need for lubrication. And more particularly greases for everything related to conveyors, chains, electric motors... The lubricants in the FUCHS Lubriant France ranges are suitable for all equipment and lend themselves to all strategies.

How would you define FUCHS expertise?

In addition to being present in all fields of application, we are recognized for certain ranges or specific technologies. This is the case for the products in our CASSIDA food range used by many food manufacturers, for greases developed specifically for the lubrication of machine tools or even biodegradable greases for applications requiring ECOLABEL approval. This is also the case for greases with complex calcium sulphonate thickeners, which will be adapted to difficult environments or heavy loads, or those with complex lithium soap.

With the complex e-lithium thickener, a high resistance to high temperatures, up to 180°C or 200°C and to greater repeated efforts, is obtained. They are more stable products than simple bases and are used in particular on bearings with medium or heavy loads, and those that can go at high speed. This technology is found, for example, in the lubrication of vehicle wheel bearings or paper machine bearings.

The complex e-calcium sulfonate thickener allows us to withstand very high loads, a fairly high temperature, but at medium or low speed. They are resistant to water aggression and corrosion and are also resistant to a weak chemical environment. They are therefore products that will be found in heavy industries such as steel mills or cement factories, but also in applications with high loads and shocks such as screens or pellet presses and in certain mechanical industries.

What impact do lubricants have on predictive maintenance?

The choice of lubricants will have a major impact on the lifespan of your mechanisms. Poor lubrication is often linked to an increased risk of equipment breakage. As we have seen, for each mechanism or environment, there is an appropriate type of lubricant. If a technician uses the wrong type of grease on his installations, he risks seeing abnormal wear and repeated breakages. Our approach at FUCHS is to provide a more appropriate solution through the analysis of the application and the operation of the machine.

As a result, RENOLIT greases fit perfectly in a logic of predictive maintenance. Depending on the product used, teams are in a position to predict the necessary intervals. Sometimes we provide calculation bases for a given type of bearing, for example, depending on the speed of rotation, the operating temperature and the type of grease used.

Tests are carried out on fats to estimate their lifespan at a certain temperature threshold. This is how it is possible to estimate the lifespan of the bearing; and by extension to calculate a lubrication interval to optimize the life and condition of said bearing.

We sometimes provide this information if we need to respond to a specific problem of our customers. This may be an objective to reduce breakage, to improve maintenance or to optimize the use of resources. It's a bit on a case-by-case basis. To provide this data, we need to have a knowledge of the machine, its environment and how it is used.

How do I choose the right lubricants?

There are obviously lubricants and greases that are a bit more generic, associated with certain uses and families of machines, but this is not enough to determine the best lubricant. You have to dig a little deeper.

Observe the environment

Sometimes you have several greases suitable for the same machine. Let's take an example: an electric motor that runs at 3,000 rpm. Depending on the temperature or operating speed, five or six different greases can be offered. If the temperature increases, for example, we will have to change the nature of the soap and/or base oil and the additives that compose it in order to enrich and increase the resistance of the fat. The objective is of course to maintain a quality of operation and avoid breakages.

Temperature, speed, friction or load are all factors to take into account when choosing a lubrication solution. In other words, it is important to consider the application and the application environment as a whole.

Consider business challenges

It also happens that customers want to change their lubricant, no longer in the context of maintenance issues, but for more strategic challenges. Whether it is a question of increasing their rates by X% or of reducing their consumption and therefore their cost but also their environmental impact, we support them in achieving these objectives.

Thus, the strategic orientation of the technical teams or the company will guide the choice of lubricant. If there is no corresponding product in our ranges and we consider it to be a real lack, we may sometimes launch a development — either by pure development or by improving the existing one.

Practical case

We had the interesting case of a customer specialized in the manufacture of cutting tools. He was confronted with a wasting of the rotating components (bearings, axles and ball joints) as well as the cylinders, linked to projections of quenching fluid during the manufacturing process.

This resulted in irregular but problematic breakages. The customer had to modify its maintenance plans to ensure more accurate monitoring of these rotating components, and increased the number of maintenance and re-lubrication interventions on the site.

The FUCHS teams offered him our RENOLIT CSX 15 grease, designed on the basis of calcium sulfonates that are naturally more resistant to aggressive fluids. This comes in place of a grease with a thickener based on simple lithium, which is less suitable for this application.

As a result, the customer was able to reduce the pace of its lubrication operations almost by six, with an equal quantity of grease per intervention. In addition to a significant decrease in the number of annual breakages, the client was able to see several gains. First, despite a higher unit price, its spending on lubricants was halved. Then, there was a reduction in labor costs, with control and maintenance interventions being more spaced out.

By choosing a grease that was closer to its needs, our customer was finally able to reduce the downtime of its equipment, reduce its operational costs and improve the overall performance of its maintenance strategy.

Is customer proximity at the heart of FUCHS expertise?

At FUCHS, we are aware of the importance of a presence in the field. We offer our customers personal support. In fact, this is also what makes us special: we are structured for that.

On the one hand, we have sales representatives with whom customers can discuss their problems at any time. These sales representatives are then supported by application engineers, divided by geographical areas. The latter intervene on more technical issues: audits, line or machine inspections, etc. Finally, there are the Product Manager functions, who can, if necessary, launch new product developments according to changes in legislation, new customer needs, new available raw materials...

This proximity is therefore sought after by our customers. We want to position ourselves as a partner, more than just a supplier. We are in a process of improvement, of supporting the client to meet its objectives and challenges in an environment of improvement and the search for performance.

It is the discussion and the constant communication on the evolution of its needs that allow us to anticipate and implement the necessary tools and developments. It's a virtuous circle.

You can now contact FUCHS from your Mobility Work CMMS

Mobility Work Hub accompanies us in this process. By importing our official catalog on the platform, we make it available to technical teams, and in return receive statistical data on the use of our products.

Advice from the lubricant expert

What is most noticeable and most important is that the industrial customer was not prepared to choose a lubricant. He did not understand that lubricants could be used to improve his working conditions and play a key role in achieving his goals.

My advice would already be to take a step back, to assess your needs — not in terms of lubricant or the associated direct cost, but in terms of the challenges and objectives for your service — and then to consider your supplier as a real provider of solutions.

This is a key point, especially in the context of maintenance, which is very often the decisive department for the good maintenance of equipment and machines. It is also linked to the improvement of their lifespan. These elements, among others, make it possible to achieve objectives that have been set by management or slightly more general issues in their team, or department.