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Cause of machine failure, ferrographic, substance identification and investigational analysis

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Go beyond ordinary oil analysis and delve deep into the true failure mechanisms of your machinery. This analysis will not just identify high iron, but can identify the type as corrosion, fatigue, cutting or sliding wear. Each report is uniquely designed not with a typical suite, but with a bespoke set of tests to identify your question.

Your questions may include:

  • Why has this machine failed?
  • Why has my filter blocked?
  • What is this material I am finding in my lube system?
  • Are these two materials the same?

Note: Analysis includes a full investigative analysis. In the rare event that your analysis requires analysis beyond this suite, then the lab will contact you before proceeding to confirm you wish to be invoiced for any additional work.

Description

Filter Tests

A senior Chemist at the laboratory opens the filter and cuts sections of filter media from the filter. The reason for not using the whole filter is these types of investigations do not have a usual list of tests as data from one test will indicate what next test to perform next. Each case is really like a detective mystery and so each clue pieces together to give the final deductions. The tests that are performed can chemically change the filter material and substances within it, so the original filter keeps being returned to as the investigation develops and new findings emerge. This means the Chemist can always return to the original state of the filter no matter what tests are performed.

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Filter tests gets to the root of your problem.

 

The small section of filter is washed in solvents and acids to remove the microscopic particles trapped in the filter media. The physical washing with a liquid rather than the specific solvents used is what removes the hard particles, but the variety of different chemicals used ensures the liquid contaminants are also extracted which can include wrong oils, varnish, but also useful information about the oil additives being used.

Filter Media Extraction

The washes are then passed through a filter patch and analysed carefully microscopically for size and morphology (a.k.a. shape) of the particles. The Chemist may choose to take photographs of any interesting particles observed for the final report at this stage.

These particles extracted will often be further analysed elementally using the LubeWear methodology, a technique exclusive to Oil Analysis Laboratories to determine the elemental composition of the material.

Some of the material will also undergo infrared analysis to identify organic chemical signatures to complement the elemental analysis. Both the infrared and elemental analysis allow the Chemist to identify the composition of any deposits, wear or fluids found.

At the end of the investigation, the laboratory will pull together all the findings from the microscopic analysis, elemental, infrared and any additional wet chemistry testing to present their findings. It is not uncommon for the laboratory to want to contact you prior to issuing the final report to discuss the findings and further narrow down the source of anything unusual, so ensure you provide as much detail as possible when submitting your filter and your contact details. This should include a question you want the lab to try to answer for you such as:

  • Why has this pump failed?
  • Why has this filter blocked?
  • What is this material?
  • Is the material in the filter substance A or Substance B?
  • Has the system been contaminated with substance X?

Unlike traditional oil or fuel analysis testing which tend to have set test suites agreed between the lab and the client and hence are reasonably automatable, investigational analysis such as this is quite labour intensive and requires senior laboratory staff to perform. Hence only specialist laboratories such as ours offer this type of service. The most common reason for these tests is off the back of a failure or a very serious oil analysis report to determine the cause. However, if using fine filtration such as an offline filter system you will be removing wear and contaminants normally detected by oil analysis, meaning failures can and have been missed when not combined with a regular filter analysis programme. We would generally recommend sending in the filter insert when you are due to change the insert or once every 12 months depending which is sooner. If you notice more frequent bypasses, blockage, frequency of changing filters or the machine does not appear to be running as normal then a filter analysis is also recommended if nothing has been identified already on the oil analysis.

Each report is unique to the question at hand e.g. what was the failure mode or why has the filter blocked, but this is an example of a typical filter investigation.

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Yes to both and on fuel filters too. On fuels the use of filters has been invaluable for identification of poor quality or misfueling as usually by the time the problem has been identified the fuel has already been burnt or the tank has been refueled meaning it cannot be detected in the fuel. However, with the fuel filter this will give an indication not just of the immediate fuel fill in the tank, but also the historical fills right back to when the filter was last changed. With non filtered systems like greases this type of investigative analysis is commonly used in determining wear mechanisms under the microscope and is commonly performed on any enhanced grease testing suites.

One of the most commonly asked questions we get when receiving filters is "what is this?". These can be unknown debris or deposits that the client has found in the machinery or post failure and are trying to identify the source. This compliments filter and ferrographic type  testing, but does not need to be on a filter and often we receive small samples of materials scraped off into a sample container for analysis.

 

 

 

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