Custard and Oil: the Importance of Quality Control and Oil Analysis

When you’re working in high end industrial services, it’s important to use quality products throughout the production process to help you produce a high quality product at the end of the line. For example, Formula One cars are the ultimate in driving machines, millions of hours and pounds go into ensuring that these machines are the mac daddy in driving machines. Every gram of weight is measured and shaved off wherever possible. Imagine you’re in pole position, waiting for the last red light to go before you drop your foot to the floor and accelerate away from the rest of the group, accept one of the interns working in the pits hasn’t filled the tank with high spec petrol; instead he’s filled it with custard. Not ideal.

This analogy is a little on the ridiculous side but it proves my point. When working towards an end product in industry, you must ensure that everything you put into the process of making the end product is as good as the product itself. To ensure quality throughout industries spend vast amounts of money on high end lubricants and oils to leave no margin for error or possible percentage of a spoilt batch.

To combat the possibility of ending up with custard in your engine, industrial companies use a process of oil analysis on all of their oils and lubricants that go into making the end product. This is a conditioning monitoring scheme that measures the worth of all the lubricants that go into making industry work at full capacity. By testing and analyzing these oils on site the process can continue with little intrusion to performance output whilst still ensuring that only the highest quality lubricants go into the process.
By constantly analyzing these lubricants and oils, problems and potential mechanical failures can be stopped before they actually occur. The ability to test on site the quality of oil and lubricants going into your system allows you a point of quality control, detecting underperforming or out-of-spec fuels or lubricants before they have a chance to danger your whole production line.
Here’s a list of the ways in which you can test the quality of your lubricants and fuels whilst on site.

Onsite Oil Analysis Laboratories are easily portable and can be mounted on walls as a permanent feature of your production line and are suitable for long term use in rough environments, they are simple to use and suitable to be operated by a none –technical person.

They give fast and accurate results on multiple oil parameters to enable you to make quick onsite decisions and act before a crucial failure within your industrial system.

When the ambient temperature of oil drops below a certain level, wax crystals can form in the oil preventing it from working as it usually would. This temperature point is called the cloud point. If you have a lot of oil sitting around in your warehouse you want to ensure that when you do come to use it, it is still in the quality it was when it rolled of the production line.  A cloud point detector measures the temperature at which these crystals appear and helps avoid potential problems within the production line such as blocked fuel pumps, filters and lines. Cloud point detectors are particularly useful for companies operating in areas of low ambient temperature.

An important characteristic of oil is its viscosity; it is this that shows the oil’s resistance to flow and the strength of the oil film between surfaces. If the oil becomes contaminated or diluted then this can cause serious problems for the quality of the oil, which can become thicker or thinner than desired for the production process. Two types of viscosity measurement available to measure the state in which your oil is in, heated and unheated. Each handheld device uses a tilt mechanism allowing a ball barring to flow through the oil, in order for its viscosity to be calculated.

When working in industry it’s important to look after every aspect of the production line, whether that be that be from the pistons and gearing of your machines or the oil and lubricants you put in the process. To ensure quality throughout your process oil analysis should be carried out at every step of the way. Without oil analysis you could be putting your machinery under unnecessary risk of brakeage and failure to produce a quality product which can in turn damage your brand and your business.