best grease?

[Nige]

look up superlube brand grease and look at test results! ( its the grease with PTFE(teflon) in it) the test was a bolt and nut in some type of vise that put 4000 lbs of pressure on it, then they would count how many turns it would turn before it galded,(they stopped the test at 1000 turns w/ no galding) Im pretty sure the bolt and nut with the 2nd best grease only turned 6 turns.I bought a case of it online 12 tubes for $60. Im in the process of buying some PTFE powder from a company called Shamrock and I will mix it with grease but I cant mix it with oil,they said Id have to get their concentrated mineral oil,cause you could never mix it enough to get it to stay.Yall know that PTFE is what was in SLICK 50(by the way slick50 dont use it anymore ?) Superlube also has PTFE in a penatrating spray,you should try that on a sliding glass door track unbelievable! Im sold on it! If anyone has any more helpful info on PTFE please let everyone know about it.

More tests developed by lubricant suppliers to "prove" that their product is the best. IMHO the ONLY test results you should be looking at in considering a grease are industry-standard ASTM tests. All the rest are just so much horse crap.

[daman]

I would like to switch with moly but am afraid one of the guys could forget or make a mistake and pump moly into the turntable bearing. If it would not harm anything then I would go for the switch.

What do you guys think.

A normal lithium base thickener #2 moly grease in slow moving bearings will hurt nothing we do it all the time in slow moving implement bearings here,it's in high speed bearings with a aluminum,or calcium complex thickener that could cause bearing skip because it has extra tackifyers and thicker base grease.

not sure on the type of set up a excavator turn table has but i highly,highly doubt it would cause any harm.

[Nige]

As per my post on the previous page Hitachi absolutely refuse to permit any sort of moly additive in grease for their swing bearings. I know because we specifically asked them. I have no idea about other manufacturers.

[daman]

I understand that but i still stand by my post so the poster has a choice to make,you should ask Hitachi exactly why a 3%lithium grease cant be used, get a better in depth(if they can) explanation from them.

[Nige]

We did ask. They provided a letter from the supplier of their slewing bearings (NTN if I recall correctly) stating that friction-reducing additives such as moly were not permitted in the grease used to lubricate said slewing rings because they had past experience of rollers "skdding" and wearing flat spots. In truth a cross-roll slewing ring is already a low-friction design (as are all roller bearings TBH) and therefore should not require additional friction reducers in the grease.

With a new slewing ring for one of our shovels close to 100 grand and probably on a 6 month delivery time we figured it would be better to follow their recommendations, especially while the machines were under warranty.

The reason all this came up was that we wanted to use a moly grease in the pins in the front end linkage of our Hitachis for obvious reasons, but the machines have automatic lubrication (including the slewing ring) all fed from a single grease tank and a single grease pump. What we ended up doing was to manufacture our own tanks with 2 compartments each one with its own pump. The central lube system was split and now one tank contains a lithium-base NLGI #2 non-moly grease and supplies only the slewing ring, the other compartment has a high-quality 800kg+ NLGI #1 5% moly grease in it. As a result pin galling on the front end of the machine has reduced almost to zero. We haven't done a pin in months.

[daman]

Usually you will only get skidding from smaller needle type bearings for obviously reasons,we've yet had any type issues with our bearings,anyway...glad you got yours figured out and using the proper grease in the pins etc,extending maintenance intervals is a time/money saver.

[Nige]

I agree. Most of the skidding issues I've seen before were with uncaged parallel rollers where they tend to "bunch" and therefore end up rubbing on one another. When Cat switched from taper rollers (extremely expensive) to parallel uncaged roller bearings (20% of the price of taper) on the 2nd reduction planetary shafts of their large trucks back around 03-04 all Hell broke loose. However as I said before when a slewing ring costs around $100k there's a limit beyond which I'm not prepared to stick my neck out just to prove a point that it'll run fine on grease with a moly additive.

[blitz138]

Nige every time I start to respond to a post you beat me to it and said about the same thing I was thinking.

[Nige]

Great minds think alike, or so my mother told me ...................

[JHESL]

We did ask. They provided a letter from the supplier of their slewing bearings (NTN if I recall correctly) stating that friction-reducing additives such as moly were not permitted in the grease used to lubricate said slewing rings because they had past experience of rollers "skdding" and wearing flat spots. In truth a cross-roll slewing ring is already a low-friction design (as are all roller bearings TBH) and therefore should not require additional friction reducers in the grease.

With a new slewing ring for one of our shovels close to 100 grand and probably on a 6 month delivery time we figured it would be better to follow their recommendations, especially while the machines were under warranty.

The reason all this came up was that we wanted to use a moly grease in the pins in the front end linkage of our Hitachis for obvious reasons, but the machines have automatic lubrication (including the slewing ring) all fed from a single grease tank and a single grease pump. What we ended up doing was to manufacture our own tanks with 2 compartments each one with its own pump. The central lube system was split and now one tank contains a lithium-base NLGI #2 non-moly grease and supplies only the slewing ring, the other compartment has a high-quality 800kg+ NLGI #1 5% moly grease in it. As a result pin galling on the front end of the machine has reduced almost to zero. We haven't done a pin in months.

This really good info. Thanks Nige. BTW: What type of high quality 800kg+ 5 % moly grease do you use for the pins?

[daman]

the other compartment has a high-quality 800kg+ NLGI #1 5% moly grease in it. As a result pin galling on the front end of the machine has reduced almost to zero.

I'm just curious but why are you using a #1 grease in your pins? to thin for summer temps should have a #2 in there.

[Nige]

Lubricating manually I would tend to agree with you, but with an autolube system things are a little different. Also you need a grease with the correct base oil viscosity .............. that's what makes the difference in my experience. One grease we use is a manufactured using a base stock of ISO 220VG viscosity. It's actually rated NLGI #0 but it pumps beautifully and sticks to pins like a sticky thing ........ having an 800kg 4-ball weld number doesn't hurt either.

Also for Lincoln autolube systems an NLGI #2 grease can occasionally cause the injectors not to reset properly because the grease doesn't flow back through the vent valve freely enough when the pump shuts off, thus leading to pins getting under-greased. I've had quite a few instances of that, even in tropical ambient temperatures. This is especially true on loaders where grease cycle intervals can be as close as every 5 minutes. If you have a maximum pump running time of 90 seconds per cycle that only leaves you 3-1/2 minutes after the pump stops for all the injectors to reset. However the benefit of an autolube system is that your pins get fresh grease very frequently. Actually what you want to happens is that the grease moves through the joint on a regular basis and takes all the cack like dirt, water, etc, with it as it leaves the joint and falls to the ground, thus keeping the joint clean internally.

Greasing manually once or twice a shift I would agree with you and use an NLGI #2 in my sort of climatic conditions. In actual fact our lube truck is equipped with NLGI #2 for manually lubricating things like graders, dozer rippers and smaller excavators.

On this particular job site I've been running 3 x Cat 994's & 2 x Hitachi EX3600's for the past 3 years and we have had a sum total of 1 pin failure on all 5 machines in that time. The case for the prosecution rests m'lud .........

JHESL. We're using either Bel-Ray Molylube SP-4-220-0 (synthetic-based, actually an NLGI #0) or Cat Ultra 5 Moly (mineral oil-based). They are both extremely good and I would recommend either one.
Other greases I've been around in the past that worked well were Exxon Super Moly & Petro-Plate M5/800. I have also got good reports of Conoco Omnigard XD5 but no personal experience of it.

[daman]

We use #2 in all our AL systems no problem pumping it,maybe yours is different.

[Nige]

Not so much a pumping issue, especially in hotter climates. More the injectors not always resetting properly. Do the systems you have include a line pressure sensor that monitors the time it takes for the pressure to decay to zero when the pump stops and the vent valve opens ..? Ours trigger an alarm if the line pressure does not fall to zero within a certain time. This indicates that some or all of the injectors may not have reset properly before the next cycle.

[daman]

I don't believe so,just sensors/alarm for flow,making sure grease is moving..manual cycle and cycle times/duration.