Machine oil analysis is an industrial maintenance action for assessing the oil's health, contamination, and machine wear. The primary goal of doing machine oil analysis is to ensure that your machines are operating as expected. Oil analysis can be compared to a blood test in a human being, where the doctor uses a small sample to determine a person's health. Suppose an anomaly is noted during oil analysis. In that case, further analysis is done to identify the primary cause and fix it before the machine, be it a speed reducer or forklift, grinds into a halt.

Why Oil Analysis for Your Industrial Machinery?

The obvious reason for doing oil analysis is establishing the condition of the oil, but it also sheds light on the machine from which the oil was drawn. We can categorize oil analysis into three based on the aim of the activity; contamination, fluid properties, and wear debris:

Fluid properties

This type of oil analysis targets to identify the nature of the oil's physical and chemical properties. In addition, it also determines the remaining useful life (RUL) and helps to answer the following questions: Is this the right oil for the machine?

• Are the additives used on oil active?
• Does the oil sample match the specified oil identification?
• How has viscosity changed from the expectation?
• What is the remaining useful life of oil?

Contamination

If there are harmful contaminants in oil used in your machinery, it could easily accelerate the damage and shutdown of an industrial facility. Machine oil analysis helps with checking the presence of contaminants, allowing you to understand what it is, causes, and the best course of action. With good oil analysis, you can answer the following questions:

• Is the oil clean?
• What type/s of contaminant is present?
• What is the origin of contamination?
• Are there signs of internal leakage?

Machine Wear Debris

This type of oil analysis helps to determine the presence of foreign particles that come from corrosion, mechanical wear, or other forms of degradation. The analysis is used to answer the following questions:

• Is the machine producing debris through wearing and tearing?
• Is the process of machine wearing normal or abnormal?
• Which internal part of the machine, whether it is a pump or motor, is the wear likely coming from?
• What is the nature of wear and cause?

What to Look for in Oil Analysis

Oil analysis is done by experts who are able to tell the issues of your machine with precision. Remember that since machine design and materials used to make them differ, it is important that the analysis staff get the correct information about the respective equipment. For example, what is the machine’s environmental condition? What about the design? For how long has the machine been in use?

Once your oil analysis is done, whether for your dumping trucks or forklifts, among other machines, here is what to look for:

• Info on oil type and its effectiveness.
• Levels of oil viscosity.
• Elemental wear data. You might want to use a wear debris atlas to match the elements.
• Check moisture levels in relation to the trended data.
• Check other analyzed data, including FTIR oxidation, demulsibility, and analytical ferrography.
• Compare the results from analysis with known information on machine and oil performance. This should include expectations for changes in environmental operating conditions.
• Review the alarm limits and make adjustments in line with the provided recommendations.

Typically, the report from oil analysis comes with a summary and recommendations that target to break down the results into layman's language. Therefore, it will be easy to establish what type of actions, especially when further investigations or urgent maintenance, are needed. To make more from the report, consider embedding the recommendation with the regular maintenance of your facility's equipment.