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Latest & Popular Articles

See the latest and most popular articles on oil analysis that have been posted to find out more about how oil analysis works and the benefits it could be doing for you.

This article will answer the following questions?


When is the best time to change my oil?




Can I miss an oil change?


How can I make my lubricating oil last longer?

There are a few types of maintenance strategies a company can adopt. You can do run to failure aka reactive maintenance, which for when the machine is working, is very little effort, but causes a mad panic and rush when it fails without warning. This loss of uptime on the machine can lead to machinery operators standing ...

Changing components based on predicted life models is just a best guess. You need a condition based reliability approach to maintenance starting with oil analysis.

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Molybdenum is usually 3 potential sources.

1) molybdenum grease contamination but this would be cause lots of wear and potential be showing an increased visibility too.
2) molybdenum from ring wear. Some engines have on the top ring a molybdenum coating to cope with high temperatures. You would need to check with the engine manufacturer if this is the case.
3) molybdenum as an additive. It is molybdenum disulphide, which acts the same as graphite would as a solid lubricant within the oil and ha...

Why is their Molybdenum in my engine oil sample?

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This is a common question I get asked and it's not as simple to answer as you might expect, but please keep with me.

Lubricating oil properties are derived from a combination of the base oil used and the additives used to enhance or remove certain desirable/undesirable characteristics. There are 5 groups of base oils – there are no good or bad groups and all the base oils have their purposes for different industries and applications. Groups 1 and 2 are mineral oils, and tend to be good solven...

Is my oil mineral, semi-synthetic or synthetic? Learn what the information on your engine oil container means.

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This article will answer the following questions:


Why do compressors fail or not work?


Is my oil or coolant contaminated with water?


Why is my compressor running hot?


When should I change my compressor oil?


When does my desiccant need changing?

Industrial air compressors are used all over the world for many different uses ranging from filling up tyres and gas cylinders to powering pneumatic tools to large industrial manufacturing processes to delivering air required in manuf...

Your compressor is failing and you don't even know it

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This article will answer the following questions:


How do I identify the cause of a machine failure?


Why do bearings fail?


How do I prevent loss of production / increase asset utilisation?

This was an interesting sample I came across recently, I thought I would make into a case study. The bearing on a conveyor line in a food production factory failed suddenly causing a whole production process to go down. The bearing was sent to the manufacturer and the grease was sent to our lab to ...

Case study: failed greased bearing cost £100k by not sampling. Don't make the same mistake and have regular oil & grease analysis

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This article will answer the following questions:


How dirty is my lube oil and how do I check my lubrcating oil cleanliness?



What are ISO 4406 and NAS SAE 4059 particle counts?


Everyone loves an underdog, but this is one example where you don't want them to win.

Dirt particles smaller than can be seen with the naked eye may appear small when compared to towering machinery. However dirt particles are one of the number one causes of premature machinery failures. Although the particles ...

David vs Goliath. Why you want Goliath to win? How dirt can destroy your machinery and oil sampling can detect this early to prevent a failure.

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I recently had a long weekend in the south of England and did a little sight seeing getting the most out of my national trust and English heritage passes. Whilst there, I visited stone henge, one of the UK's and potentially the world's most recognisable ancient monuments. Listening to the audio tour, the guide was explaining about the numerous restoration projects that had taken place on the site and one peaked my interest.

In 1900 one of the larger trilithons (the two parallel stones with one ...

Can you make your lube oil last 5000 years?

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