How important are oil additives in effective lubrication.

Whenever oil performance is discussed viscosity is the main focus. Seldom is the importance of additives in oil given center stage.

What are oil additives?

Additives are organic or inorganic compounds dissolved or suspended as solids in oil. They typically make up between 0.1 to 30 percent of the oil volume, depending on the application. Additives have three basic roles:

1. Enhance existing base oil performance with

Investing in effective hydraulic filters could save you a fortune in downtime.

Dirt in a hydraulic system is a potential killer, and without the correct hydraulic filters the dirt will silently destroy your investment. The dirt we’re talking about is usually so fine that you’d battle to see it with the naked eye.

But by effectively controlling the level of contaminants (dirt) to acceptable levels you can reduce system failure by as much as 75%.

That is extremely important when you consider the

With the ever increasing range of synthetic oil, how do you know what synthetic oil is the best? Or even whether you should use regular or synthetic oil, for your application.

How to choose the right synthetic oil

The first step in choosing the right synthetic oil for the application is to be certain you’re comparing apples with apples - or more accurately don’t confuse “synthetic oil” with fully synthetic oil! As we’ve already seen in earlier posts, not all synthetic lubes are 100% synthetic.
Here’s a summary of the groups again:

• Groups I and II are universally referred to as mineral oils.
• Group III is the tricky collection. In the USA these are referred to as synthetic though they might be extremely refined or blended mineral oils.

Perhaps you've felt like a child in a candy store when wanting to choose synthetic gear oil out of a glitzy pamphlet? How frequently would you have paid for someone to teach you how to choose the best type of synthetic gear oil? Continue reading... In this 3 part series we’ll look at the subject in depth.

Just like synthetic lubricants in any application, synthetic gear oil is typically used when crude based gear oil has reached the performance limit and can no longer satisfy the application demands; for instance, at very low or high temperatures, higher than normal loads, extraordinary ambient conditions, or if they fail to meet special conditions such as flammability.

Although additives can enhance several attributes of crude based oils,

What is synthetic oil? Everyone knows the answer... it’s an artificial oil! Well; right and wrong. Today we’re going to try and shed some more light on what is synthetic oil.

Synthetic base stocks are man-made and tailored to have a controlled molecular structure with predictable properties, unlike mineral base oils, which are complex mixtures of naturally occurring hydrocarbons.

In order to understand what is synthetic oil, it’ll be helpful to know that Dr. Hermann Zorn of I.G. Farben Industries in Germany began

Do you monitor the oil temp of your stationary air compressor? Ever notice that the oil runs hot? Are you spending more on oil-changes because of oil deterioration? Well you could save on oil changes and extend equipment life by switching to synthetic air compressor oil.

Using  synthetic air compressor oil has all of the following benefits; extended