IM 2017 January | Page 42

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agricultural, construction and mining machines, it’ s going to require lubrication,” says Peter Laucis, Director of Portfolio Management – ALS Products, SKF Lubrication Business Unit.“ And the heavier the loads, the more aggressive and dirty the environment, the greater the need for lubrication.”
While manual lubrication is still the norm in many applications, use of automated lubrication systems( ALS) is becoming a more prevalent alternative to help minimise downtime, improve overall quality and safety through preventative maintenance.
With an ALS, lubricant can be applied exactly when and where it’ s needed while the machine is running. Manual lubrication, on the other hand, requires the machine to be stopped before lubricant can be applied, and may require a person to climb onto the machine which can be a safety issue.
In addition to helping increase safety and productivity for equipment owners, Laucis says OEMs can also benefit from integrating an ALS into their equipment.“ It can extend warranty and performance, and it can maintain the unit running at various conditions under the design the machine was geared to do.”
An ALS consists of a reservoir containing grease or other designated lubricant and an electric, pneumatic or hydraulic pump which activates the system to deliver lubricant from the reservoir to the desired location within the machine. Depending on the design of the machine, lubricant can be dispensed to as many
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www. deepmining2017. com as 100 or 200 different points. A series of metering valves are used to apply the lubricant in the desired location at the exact time lubrication is needed.
The system knows where and when to apply lubricant due to built-in controls. If the ALS is integrated into a machine at the factory, the system can be controlled by the OEM’ s programmable logic controller( PLC). The appropriate lubrication intervals are programmed into the PLC, enabling it to turn on the ALS when necessary.
SKF also designs controllers which can be built into the system if it is added to a piece of equipment at the aftermarket level or another point along the OEM channel, such as by a dealer. Laucis says these controllers can provide simple on / off control or be more sophisticated through the inclusion of sensing devices to provide operators with information about when lubrication cycles are occurring, fault indicators and performance attributes.
Single line parallel and progressive are the two main types of lubrication systems used within heavy-duty mobile applications. A single line parallel system consists of a reservoir and a pump connected to a bank of injectors by a single hose line. The injectors are lined up in parallel with one another, like fingers on comb, and each of the injectors function independently of one another. By doing so, each injector meters the exact amount of lubricant required and can also be adjusted independently if necessary.
The independent functionality is beneficial because if one bearing fails or gets blocked in some manner, it will not adversely affect lubrication of other bearings in the machine.“ People like the single line parallel because they can lubricate the entire machine of, let’ s say 120 points, and when a couple of those points fail, they’ re still getting lubrication in the other systems,” says Laucis.
He notes these systems are often used in heavy mining equipment due to the need to minimise downtime as much as possible. It can also be used in construction equipment to avoid poor operator maintenance and in agricultural equipment for safety and bearing protection.
Progressive systems are similar, except the single line goes to a series of valve blocks instead of a parallel line of injectors. Each valve block meters lubricant to various points within a machine; one block may have up to 12 points to which it provides lubricant, and the next block or zone will lubricate another 12 points, and so on.“ The main difference is if you have one bearing that blocks, it literally stops the entire system because the grease is progressing through the system in a series,” Laucis says.“ If you block one bearing it will actually have a hydraulic lock on every piston in that block in the system, then the whole system shuts down.” IM
40 International Mining | JANUARY 2017