As businesses across every industry struggle to come to terms with the impact of COVID-19, many are investigating solutions that allow for workforce changes. Lubrication Engineers (LE) South Africa suggests that when it comes to lubrication requirements for factories, machinery and capital equipment, it’s important to maintain lubrication schedules to avoid failures and resultant downtime. The company has developed a range of lubrication solutions to help businesses keep their equipment running smoothly while factoring in things like reduced personnel onsite.
“We understand that companies are implementing social distancing measures and trying to keep as many people working from home as possible,” says Callum Ford, national marketing manager at LE South Africa. “We are helping them to ensure they don’t need to compromise on equipment safety or machinery uptimes because there are fewer people available to attend to the lubrication requirements.”
LE supplies various products and solutions to make automated lubrication possible, which cuts down on manual tasks, as well as decreasing the risk of lubrication cross-contamination. “We estimate that 60 to 80% of bearing failures are lubricant-related, including problems caused by grease cross-contamination,” says Ford.
“When the wrong grease is applied to a piece of equipment, the resulting issues can be expensive and time-consuming to correct. Our single-point lubrication systems, which are essentially micro-computer lubricators, deliver precise, timed lubrication without the need for time-consuming manual lubricant application. The exact greasing quantity and re-greasing intervals for each bearing can be easily calculated and managed by the MQL schedule.”
In addition, the RFID system on LE South Africa’s range of top-quality Xport single-point applicators helps customers to track, monitor and fix lubrication-related issues during routine inspections, thus simplifying and improving their plant maintenance. They will be installed at any location, and run on either battery or mains power.
They are ideal for equipment located in isolated or dangerous areas and, aside from cutting down on man-power required to keep equipment running, they also help to eliminate potential human errors and improve employee safety. The single-point lubricators can be used with LE’s complete line of high-performance industrial greases, from electric motors to food-grade, high-temperature and all-purpose lubricants.
Single-point lubricators remove the uncertainty in greasing intervals and grease volumes on each bearing, as well as ensuring no lubrication point is missed during inspection. They enable easy tracking of bearing problems and ultimately reduce maintenance costs.
LE South Africa also offers lubrication accessories to help simplify inspections and lubrication monitoring, as well as removing potential contaminants.
“Our oil sight glasses give people visual insight into what is happening with their lubricant at all times, allowing them to catch potential problems early on and to address these,” says Ford. This minimises downtime, ensures machinery runs optimally and reduces repair costs. Customers can continuously monitor the clarity, colour, sediment and water contamination levels of their lubricants. Some models even allow you to easily remove the water by draining it right out of the system.”
The oil sight glasses can be piped to a desiccant breather, which removes humidity and tiny dust particles out of the air as it passes through the filter, ensuring moisture does not enter your lubrication reservoir. Ford says that desiccant breathers are advised for all applications except water-based hydraulic fluid lubricants.
“We encourage businesses to contact us with any lubrication challenges they’re facing,” he says. “We will do our best to help them create a solution to keep their equipment running smoothly to get their organisations through these challenging times.”
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