ROCK DRILL GREASE

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How to Choose Your Grease

SMP HEALTHY ALTERNATIVE LUBRICANT – DTH ROCK DRILL GREASE

Maintaining a safe working environment, ensuring the best air quality, and maintaining reliable equipment are big priorities for ITH drill operators, supervisors, and operations managers of underground mines.

Sudbury Mining Products’ Healthy Alternative Lubricant (HaL) ITH Rock Drill Grease provides an ideal environment and significantly improved air quality for ITH/DTH rock drill teams.  Instead of dispersing oil into the atmosphere, SMP HaL coagulates at the exhaust, adheres to the cylinder, or is blown against the rock face.

There are many advantages to using HaL rather than oil for lubrication. Extensive testing has proven:

  • 83-90% reduction in atmospheric oil dispersion
  • 30% reduction in drill maintenance costs
  • 50% reduction in lubrication consumption
  • Better performance at high temperature
  • Achievement of an improved seal
  • HaL is less prone to water wash

Fabricated to meet pressure vessel registration, HAL is simple, safe and best of all very low maintenance. HaL works hard to provide value to both management and operators.

HaL rock drill grease supports management:

  • Protect equipment operators and personnel
  • Mitigate premature equipment damage, wear, and tear
  • Extend equipment useful life
  • Better manage drill part replacement
  • Increase equipment reliability and predictability
  • Reduce unplanned equipment downtime

HaL rock drill grease protects equipment operators:

  • Eliminate oil mist and dispersion
  • Manage air contaminants in closed space
  • Reduce wear during operational periods
  • Mitigate oxidative stressors during non-operational periods
  • Seal out water and other environmental contaminants
  • Low cost, low maintenance, long term lubrication

Anatomy of Your Industrial Grease

Choosing the best lubricant for an industrial application is an involved process. While these oil and grease compounds come in a number of varieties and combinations, the optimal variety for your application is critical.

Lubricants are made up of three main components; a base, which constitutes 70-90% of the final compound; a thickener, comprises 3-30% of the recipe, and additives, which complete the balance.

Choosing the Right Base

A lubricant can be mineral, vegetable, or synthetic oil based. Mineral based lubricants are derived from crude oil and are typically used in general purpose applications. Vegetable based oils are typically used in environmentally sensitive applications and are used as a biodegradeable lubricant. Synthetic based lubricants, are lab-made base oils that are best applied to harsh conditions where temperatures are extreme.

Achieve the Appropriate Structure

Thickeners are designed to produce the semi-fluid to solid state of the lubricant structure. These might include metal and non-metal soap thickeners, as well as non-soap thickeners. While metal and non metal variety greases have attractive load carrying abilities and high dropping-off points, non-metal complexes can be suitable for extreme temperature applications.

Impact the Relevant Properties

Additives impact the lubricant in three main ways and can;
  1. Enhance desirable properties;
  2. suppress undesirable properties; or
  3. contribute entirely new properties to a given industrial lubricant.

Depending on what is required for the application additives can combat oxidation, clean and neutralize impurities, support anti-wear, inhibit corrosion, affect lubricant viscosity, bear extreme pressure, and reduce air dispersions.

Choosing the Right Grease

Every application of an industrial lubricant is unique. For this reason, lubricants are engineered specific to an application, and can be customized to suit unique needs. Some of the factors considered when choosing the appropriate lubricating agent include:

  • Environmental conditions
  • Temperature
  • Vibration capacity
  • Load to be carried
  • Demands on the agent
  • Operating speed
  • Type of wear point friction
  • Amount of water present
  • Engineering, OEM, industry standards

Benefits of Well-managed Lubrication Programs

Although the process of selecting the appropriate lubricant can be involved, the benefits gained from appropriate information gathering and implementation of a well managed lubrication program are significant:

  • Minimize total cost of asset ownership
  • Increase asset predictability
  • Reduce unplanned plant and equipment downtime
  • Better manage part and component replacement
  • Minimize bearing and bushing failure
  • Seal out environmental contaminants
  • Protection of rust, corrosion, wear, noise, vibration
  • Improve labour maintenance utilization
  • Measurable cost savings in energy utilization