Haris: Hello Martin!
Martin: Hello Haris, how are you doing?
Haris: Are strangers allowed in your office?
Martin: You are not stranger to me, come on in!
Haris: OK, excellent. Listen, we are having some coffee here, actually Lubrication Over Coffee, but I’ve changed a topic a little bit to… Lubrication Over Ice Cream!
Because I know you are a big fun of ice cream.
Martin: Totally!
Haris: So, we are discussing about LUBExpert strategy, and we want to know more about lubricants and their role in Lubrication excellence, so my idea was to ask you to share some wisdom while we eat our ice creams.
Martin: Well … sadly, I don’t have my ice cream on me, but I can tell you that there are two very important aspects about ice cream. One is, of course, sharing, sharing ice cream.
Haris: Here you are…
Martin: Thanks! Really nice of you! The virtual ice cream, great for my virtual diet! The thing is about ice cream, it’s about the flavour it must be vanilla, and it must be white chocolate glazed i.e., it must be a Magnum.
Haris: Wow, so it must be Magnum vanilla white chocolate glazed.
Martin: Absolutely!
Haris: What does it have to do with lubrication?
Martin: Nothing but nobody likes the white chocolate one so you can always find one in the freezer when you want one.
Haris: I like that one! That’s a good idea, actually, you need to like something that others don’t.
Martin: It’s like going to the oil store and always being able to find what you want to properly manage a well executed lubrication program.
Haris: Exactly!
Martin: Making sure nobody else wants to touch it!
Haris: Ok, so what about sharing wisdom a little bit with us?
Martin: What, oil and grease wisdom or some other forms of wisdom?
Haris: I was thinking about lubrication wisdom.
Martin: Wisdom… ok, so you thinking along the lines of… let’s see what that you actually want to know specifically in this wisdom, I mean, how much time do we have?
Haris: Well, we have 4 minutes. I was hoping you can make us an expert in 4 minutes, what can you do for us?
Martin: Oh sure, I can print up a certificate for you in 4 minutes
Haris: Thanks, that’s a good beginning but we need more…
Martin: Oh, you need more, do you? So, how about this analogy then… we should talk about cars, because I know you’re a bit of a petrol head like me, eh?
Haris: Exactly!
Martin: So, you are driving along ignoring your dashboard lights, pretty much like 99% of motorists out there, you don’t pay attention to the dashboard light. But there’s one important dashboard light: your tyre pressure monitoring system; and it is telling you that there’s no air in your tires and you starting to wonder above the sound of the music playing on the radio. You starting to wonder what that rumbling sound is, right?
Haris: Yes
Martin: Maybe you are kind of hearing that impact between your wheel rims and the tarmac, eh?
Haris: Probably
Martin: So, what’s that got to do with lubrication then?
Haris: Well, if something happened to friction tires and tarmac obviously
Martin: Yeah, we need that supporting load, we need to be able to support the load, right? And we rely on the air in the tyre because the air is trapped in the tyre, right?
Sorry I’ve just dropped my balls… ahaha
So, I want to do a little demonstration of the desk here, because, fundamentally, with rolling contact lubrication, we are relying on the elastic deformation of the bearing element against the bearing race. In the same way that your tyre deforms elastically even when it’s at the correct air pressure. It helps to increase the contact area and increase the grip between the tire and the road surface. So, it works to our advantage having that elasticity of the tyre, but, of course, it is, fundamentally, even this hard steel ball bearing has an element of elasticity and under load that bearing element in the bearing race perform elastically. But when they deform elastically, they actually trap a film of oil between the bearing element and the bearing race and that helps to prevent metal to metal contact. But, of course, if you’ve been ignoring your recent schedules and your grease has gone a little bit dry, there’s not enough oil in the grease, that bearing element is now running in contact with the bearing race.
So, I just want to do a little sharing of something I do when I’m doing my training, because, basically, with the way things are, of course, most of us are doing our training via the computer, and so, for example, in order to demonstrate what I’m wanting to show, here is my ball and rolling along the desk you hear that impact. Hopefully, that’s coming across microphone.
Now, if we take a film of grease, let me make sure that the logo is the correct way round for the camera. If we take that film of grease and we put that film of grease then, you can hear the difference.
Haris: Absolutely!
Martin: That dumping effect is demonstrating what your film of oil does within the bearing, it is preventing the noise and it is preventing that impact and potential fatigue damage, surface fatigue damage. Specifically, to body surface fatigue that can take place when there’s a lack of lubricant film between the bearing element and the bearing race.
So, you wanted to expertise and 4 minutes I’m afraid we’ve only just kind of, it’s like an iceberg, we just touched on a subject very quickly there. But it’s a simple analogy is like this that gets that message across and, basically, we want to make sure that people are, in fact, paying attention to these things and using all the senses that they have: sight, sound, smell, touch and if, you want to, you could even lick the bearing like you do with your ice cream. But those senses help us to determine what’s going on and noises is just one such example.
So, you feel like an expert?
Haris: Absolutely! Especially when you are mentioning the sound and the contact between rolling elements and their races that’s what we do. So, it is absolutely a fantastic analogy, I like the example, it’s excellent!
Martin: So, yeah, I don’t know what else I can say to make you an expert, except to watch the tyre pressure monitoring light on your dashboard!
Haris: I’ll do that and I’m doing that!
Martin: You are? Why are you driving now, I thought there was a lockdown!
Haris: OK, so, these were few nice minutes of sharing wisdom but, I want more. So, I will go get some ice cream and get some coffee and then we will sit again and go a bit deeper, is that ok?
Martin: Deeper, eh?
Haris: Exactly, deeper into the lubrication wisdom
Martin: Ok, fair enough!
