80% of all hydraulic and lubrication breakdown is caused by contaminated oil!

Breakdowns are not just an annoyance and an inconvenience

How do you prevent breakdowns occurring?  Pro-active maintenance through condition monitoring is the answer.  Pro-active maintenance conducted at its best can dramatically increase your machine uptime capacity which will lead to greater productivity, which will in turn lead to greater profits.  It will also probably at least halve your costs of repair and will greatly increase the life expectancy of your machines.  Research has shown that 1 unit of improved cleanliness will bring about 5 units machine life extension.  By following a good pro-active maintenance programme, you are not only improving production by averting breakdowns, you are also protecting your company’s assets.

As contamination is the leading cause of mechanical failure, it stands to reason that if you can identify the presence of contaminant and then remove it from your system, you will greatly reduce your risk of breakdown.
Just look around your plant and machine.  Think of all the ways that contaminant can enter your system.  Through machine wear, from the atmosphere, through fitting products to your machine that are contaminated from their manufacturing process, through poor oil transfer processes or through worn seals or breathers.

You can identify contaminant in a number of ways:

· Oil sampling
You can take a sample of your oil and have it analysed by a laboratory.  They will provide you with a full analysis of your oil and a breakdown of contaminants present.  It is an extremely cost-effective way of finding out the full chemical make-up of your oil.  However, if finding out the composition of your oil is a time critical thing, this will not be a suitable option for you as it can take up to five days for the results to get to you as the samples need to be mailed to the laboratory.  (Show picture of report).

· Patch Test Kits
These kits allow you to sample and analyse your oil on the spot.  Their sensitivity gives accurate and detailed, immediate results.  However, you will need to know what you are doing in order to obtain meaningful results  (Show picture of dirty patch).

· Particle Counters
These range from the very expensive to low cost.  They are suitable for continuous use and they give you live readings of the condition of your oil.  A particle counter is an essential tool for contamination control as the live readings will help you keep your oil clean and confirm target cleanliness.  Used on an ongoing basis, it will help you detect high levels of corrosive wear, abnormal gear wear, pump and bearing condition.  It will confirm whether a filter is performing correctly or is the right filter for the job and it will tell you how clean your new oil is.

You have identified that your system is contaminated, now you need to clean it.  How do you go about it?  Probably one of the most efficient ways of going about this is to use an off-line filtration unit. 

· Offline filtration
Filtertechnik has developed is an ‘intelligent filtration concept’, the IFC6000, which will clean your oil and remove water to 3 microns and give you live particle count and water monitor readings.  It is a filtration unit with a built in particle counter and water monitor but that’s not even the intelligent bit!  That comes with the IFC6000s software.  You can connect the unit to your PC and view the oil condition in real time in graphical format.  It also allows you to gain full traceability by storing your results.

· Flushing
Hot oil flushing is ideal for cleaning new plant installations prior to commissioning or for systems that have built up a great deal of debris and contaminant over a period of time.  Hot oil is flushed through the system using turbulent flow which removes all dirt and contaminant.

· Managed Filtration Package
Filtertechnik’s managed filtration package is ideal for larger companies with serious contamination issues.  For a fixed contract price, Filtertechnik will perform a full site audit, establish ISO target levels, perform regular monitoring checks, ensure that target cleanliness levels are achieved and maintained as well as providing all your filters and particle monitors as part of the package.

Sounds expensive?  It’s not!  A one off oil sample will cost you £11 – that is for the bottle and the fully analysed laboratory result.  A patch test kit will cost you £2,500 and full on site training on how to use a patch test kit is given free.  The offline filtration unit will only cost you £3,850.  The managed filtration package will probably cost you no more than your current filtration spend.  Compare those figures to the cost that you originally ascribed to the cost of breakdowns. Can you really afford to ignore the cost of contamination? 
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Call Filtertechnik on 0800 068 4134 or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or fax on 0800 358 3600 to discuss how Filtertechnik can help you clean up your act.