×
Machinery Lubrication March 2026
Featured Article
Lubrication is one of the most common maintenance tasks in any industrial plant, yet it’s also one of the most misunderstood. Greasing a bearing, topping off a gearbox, or checking an oil level seems simple. Because of that, lubrication often gets treated like a basic routine rather than a precision activity. Many facilities underestimate just how often lubrication sits at the root...
Data from PdM programs across mining and aggregates facilities reveals a clear pattern. The following five fault types are the most commonly detected and offer the greatest opportunity to intervene before failures occur.
Viscosity is the measure of the oil’s resistance to flow (shear stress) under certain conditions. To simplify, the oil’s viscosity represents the measure for which the oil wants to stay put …
Reynolds number (Re) is a dimensionless value used to predict whether fluid flow in a pipe will be laminar, transitional, or turbulent. In oil flushing, Re matters because turbulent flow improves the ability to dislodge and transport contamination to filtration rather than letting debris settle in low-velocity regions. The goal is not simply “some turbulence,” but enough turbulence to keep ...
Industrial facilities depend on reliable machinery and skilled maintenance teams to maintain smooth operations. Daily tasks such as lubrication, inspections, and equipment servicing place workers close to moving parts, stored energy, and chemical products. Safety awareness supports both people and assets by reducing the chance of incidents that can disrupt production and cause harm.
As maintenance teams work to reduce downtime, increase reliability, and support more sustainable operations, traditional oil analysis is no longer enough. Today’s maintenance programs require tools that can report current oil condition and also forecast how that condition will change over time. To explore how AI is advancing this shift, we spoke with Lisa Williams.
Why has lubrication drifted from a specialized engineering discipline to something many plants treat as a basic task? In this episode of Gear Talk, recorded at Reliable Plant 2025, host Wes Cash sits down with Danny Shorten to explore how the role of lubrication has changed over the last four decades—and why it may be time to rethink it.
Almost every lubricant used in plants today started off as just a base oil. The base oil category defines what the oil is made of, how it is manufactured, and how the lubricant handles certain environments such as extreme heat.The American Petroleum Institute (API) has categorized base oils into five categories (API 1509, Appendix E).
Related Articles
Ingredion Adopts AI to Detect Failures and Boost Machine Uptime
3 Steps to Start Using Oil & Vibration Analysis the Right Way
How to Turn Condition Monitoring Data into Maintenance Action
How AI Forecasting Is Transforming Oil Analysis and Maintenance Planning
