Why do you need a power grease gun? Why not use the old fashioned hand-operated kind.

By the way, in case you haven't heard my soapbox speach... 6316 bearing at 3600 rpm is operating at or beyond the reasonable boundaries where grease lubrication will operate reliably imo (and according to many handbooks). If our experience is any guide (we have a few of these), you can expect fairly short bearing lives.

Hi
I agree. 6316 may be undersized for 600HP Toshiba motor. I saw Baldor 700hp/2p motor used 6217 bearings that was short lived.
I have to grease up 10-15 motors and low pressure hand grease gun needs 33 pumping for 1oz of grease.Do the math

There are some autolubers that operate on low pressure that might work. If you're interested, reply as such, and I'll post the website of the one's I'm talking about. I'm a big fan of autolubers because they lubricate equipment with small amounts of lube continously instead of large amounts periodically. They also lubricate while the machine is operating, which is better then lubricating while its not.

I visit two facilities where they use the 18V (i believe) Lincoln guns. Both facilities have managers that would throw them in the river if they could get them away from the oilers. The oilers like them because they don't have to do any work, just pull the trigger.
The managers hate them because they have grease everywhere now, and yes, the seals are being blown (MANAGER: Why did you run grease in that bearing until it came out from under the guard OILER:It wasn't me, I only let it go pchu, pchu, and quit. )

We all (Me and the two reliability managers) believe the old fashion way (as EPETE mentioned)is still the best. If it takes you that many pumps to get an ounce of grease, I suggest you get a better gun

Dave

The lincoln gun gives an exact quantity per stroke which can be felt if the operator pays attention. The remote air type in a noise area may not be heard. I would think if the lubricators are over greasing, they either don't have an exact frequency/qunatity chart or they don't care. Give them the chart and directive or a gate pass.

Management should give direction! Have vented plugs, follow procedures, etc... If they don't have procedures nor have been trained, then management is at fault. The PM should say; equip ID, brg ID, frequency, quantity and include cautions. If then you have problems, it lies squarely on the tech's shoulder.

Because I am in a food plant and started on the floor in maintenance, when an OEM spec calls for two hundred shots of lube to purge CIP chemicals, I definitely see the value of a self operating grease gun!

I agree with both the end and the means of Sam's statement. I see an awful lot of over greasing in general, with or without a powered grease gun. We have begun adding detailed instructions that cover re-lubricating motors specifically. Nearly every motor manufacturer publishes a load and speed to hours run chart that includes quantity of lube to be used per motor frame size. Mandating (for lack of a better word) how much lube to use has actually eliminated some of the monthly re-lube PMs.

As a test of the newly written lubrication work order we started with one machine as a pilot project for 1 year, a 40 HP Baldor in-line coupled to a Hoffman three stage blower at 3600 rpm. Now PdM is the only information used to determine bearing health and re-lubrication requirements. The machine is now in it's third year and running as good as it should. The techs use the 18v Lincoln Auto-lube. More machines have been added with the same success. We are now calculating the reduction of time based PM activities as a cost savings and progress monitor of the PdM program.

Perhaps an electronic grease meter would help:
http://www.reliabilitydirectstore.com/ESKF-lectronic-Gr...skf-lagm%201000e.htm

Typically I take an electronic scale and weigh the shot of grease and label the grease gun. As Dave mentions; a meter eliminates the need to calibrate and/or count pumps.

Hi,Guy Thanks for info.Here my selection for now. Alemite hand grease gun with grease flow meter. I just wonder that grease up motor bearings is very critical maintenance practice;however, there is not enough tech assist such as controled grease flow meter. Here is my thought.
"Grease amount control meter"(whatever...)
1.Operating mode selection.
1-1.Flow meter mode....meter grease flow.
1-2.Control flow mode...go to next selection
2.Control flow mode selection
2-1.Total flow control mode... flow exact amount specified.
2-2. Bearing type mode...entering bearing model(6313,6211,nu2315....) will automatically determine amount of grease to fill.
3.Controlled flow mode
"Enter amount of grease" then eneter whatever amount...then go to final question.
4.Bearing type mode
"Enter bearing #", this will determatically determine amount of grease by looking up data base....then go to final questions.
5.Final questions
"Did you open the grease drain plug, y/n"
Entering "Y" will start greasing. Final question can be modified and add questions such as "Check type of grease y/n"....etc
There should be low/high volume selection switch somewhere on the powered gun. Then pull the trigger or hand pumping will start measuring total grease amount. It will shut off when it reaches to predetermined amount. No more over greasing. Alemite grease flow meter cost $180-$200. This inovative grease meter should cost $300-500.

Trico has the same meter for 417.00 USD
Great tool. |

quote:

Originally posted by RRS_Dave:
We all (Me and the two reliability managers) believe the old fashion way (as EPETE mentioned)is still the best. If it takes you that many pumps to get an ounce of grease, I suggest you get a better gun

Dave

A 'better' gun? I believe that 33 pumps per oz is pretty much industry standard. That's what my Lincoln guns put out (I know it because I've engraved it on the guns), and they're pretty high-end units. It doesn't matter whether it's a lever style or pistol style, 33 pumps per oz is what I get from a good gun.
That having been said, I have a power greaser (the type that sits on a 5 gallon bucket of grease) in my shop, but it's only used by the forklift maintenance guy for greasing the outdoor forklifts. There's a Lincoln portable power greaser in the crib, too, but I've never tried it out. I'm just old school, I guess, and my needs aren't as great as those of some others. I probably only pump 4oz of grease into the machines per week on average.

All this banter about hand versus electric grease guns. Why not look into using a grease gun equipped with an acoustic lubrication device so you know how much the bearing needs...not what a manufacturer has stated. Every bearing is running in a unique situation be it hot,cold, load etc. We use the UVLM Ultra-Lube Systems here with great success. I have four of these units in use at our facility. We have written lube PMs' that are used as a guideline for lubrication scheduling within CMMS. The beauty of the acoustic lubrication system is we are seeing less over/under-greasing or bearing failures attributed to the use of hand or electric grease guns. The benefits far outway the guessing game of "number of shots or ounces" game that mfgs' recommend. Remember that bearing companies sell bearings, not reliability.

billdcat,
Hope your still out there! Or anyone else using acoustic grease application monitoring devices.

We recently acquired an ultrasonic application monitor specifically designed for re-lubrication monitoring. .

Unfortunately when we got it and started using it for it's intended purpose we found that because this unit was tuned at a fixed frequency, the noise a VFD, inverter, or drive would all but drown any noise a good bearing might emit.

More and more of our criticals are driven by VFDs for various reasons so my question is, is there a "tune-able" grease application monitoring system out there? Or do all acoustic re-lubrication monitors share the same limitation?

We will use our system for non VFD driven criticals (the list is getting shorter each year) but am disappointed there was not truth in advertising of this unit by the manufacturer who will remain nameless. It is a good product and does what is claimed, just not on VFD driven motors.
For Your Consideration,

Noisemakr,

Why not tell us the Make and Model of what you are using and thereby give the vendor and other users the opportunity to make comments? You have identified a real issue that needs discussion. The primary vendors that make ultrasound meters with lubrication adapters are: ULVM, SDT, and UE Systems (any others?). I use an older SDT 150 meter without a special sensor for lubrication (just the standard contact sensor). It is quite senstive to background noise from VFD motors, so it can make low level measurements difficult or impossible.

Walt

At Hans,
Hello Hans, do you have any feedback on:
http://maintenanceforums.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/319103451/m/5411023793

Thanks!

quote:

Originally posted by Hans:
There are some autolubers that operate on low pressure that might work. If you're interested, reply as such, and I'll post the website of the one's I'm talking about. I'm a big fan of autolubers because they lubricate equipment with small amounts of lube continously instead of large amounts periodically. They also lubricate while the machine is operating, which is better then lubricating while its not.

quote:

Originally posted by Metalworker Mike:

quote:

Originally posted by RRS_Dave:
We all (Me and the two reliability managers) believe the old fashion way (as EPETE mentioned)is still the best. If it takes you that many pumps to get an ounce of grease, I suggest you get a better gun

Dave

A 'better' gun? I believe that 33 pumps per oz is pretty much industry standard. That's what my Lincoln guns put out (I know it because I've engraved it on the guns), and they're pretty high-end units. It doesn't matter whether it's a lever style or pistol style, 33 pumps per oz is what I get from a good gun.
That having been said, I have a power greaser (the type that sits on a 5 gallon bucket of grease) in my shop, but it's only used by the forklift maintenance guy for greasing the outdoor forklifts. There's a Lincoln portable power greaser in the crib, too, but I've never tried it out. I'm just old school, I guess, and my needs aren't as great as those of some others. I probably only pump 4oz of grease into the machines per week on average.

Your industry standard 33 strokes per oz. is for a high pressure gun, something your not supposed to be using on a motor anyway.

Low pressure, A500 type guns use 22 strokes per Oz. I've greased too many motors over my lifetime, big and small, never had a problem doing the job right with a hand gun. Of course, the difference between a low pressure and a high pressure is only 1000 psi I believe.

Walt,

We use a ULVM at the place I mentioned that was using the battery powered guns. It had a problem with the vfd's also.

D

Dave

quote:

Originally posted by Walt Strong:
Noisemakr,

Why not tell us the Make and Model of what you are using and thereby give the vendor and other users the opportunity to make comments?
Walt

Walt and All, It is not my intention to do any "product bashing" but you are right, as a community we should learn from and teach each other by our experiences. The product is the UE Systems Grease Caddy. It does a fine job with non VFD driven motor bearings and bearings in general.

The "truth in advertising" comment was driven by UE Systems support response which was a very short, "Yes we have heard that". In fairness they did offer to buy it back and I'll repeat, the tool works very well for non VFD driven motor bearings and bearings in general.
YPIP,

One gun I use: Alemite md'l 1056 delivers volume stroke @1.78 grams per stroke while pressure position - 1.14 grams per stroke.

Gents. As to my original post concerning the use of acoustical lubrication, I have also run into the VFD problem. We have a UE Ultraprobe 2000 that is used on VFD units due to the ability of frequency tuning on the unit. Since the inception of acoustical lubrication techniques, written lube PMs'. and data tracking within our CMMS we ahve reduced the amount of grease consumed by 25%, 35% reduction in the amount of bearings consumed from our tool room and a significant gain 13-15% over a years' period in machine reliability since data aquisition was done.