Practical Insights About Solid Film Lubricants

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A belief exists that extreme conditions are not a common occurrence. But every manufacturing plant does have a single module where from a lubrication point of view operating conditions fall into the category of extreme. The popular extremes includes low and high speed of the shafts or inaccessibility.

Absolute limits tends to emerge for liquid lubricants irrespective of the oil type. They turn out to be conditions that alter the condition of the oil preventing film formulation. But the story does not end there. Numerous materials that have been protecting the fluid film is created or discovered. Such materials are applied to the surface in the form of a fluid or an additive. Such materials have the characterization of solid film lubricants. Teflon along with graphite fall into the bandwidth of machine lubrication.

General properties solid dry lubricants and their common types

Each type of solid dry lubricant does have its own properties. For example graphite along with molybdenum disulphide tends to be oilioscopic. What it indicates is that the structure is not able to tolerate any detergents. You may compare it to walking in a room where there are full of slippery plates. The labella components have higher load bearing capacity in rolling and sliding mode. Graphite possess superior temperature capability and in a radiation atmosphere is known to function well. MOS2 functions well in superior vacuum and would be able to tolerate higher loads in comparison to graphite.

Till the end of the 18th century the discovery of MOS2 did not occur,, though it is not present in metallic form in nature. The material was restricted to the lab till their commercial use was possible in the early part of the 19th century. With the passage of time it become evident that it was a viable replacement for Tungsten in steel alloy materials. A reason for the same is that the density is half than that off tungsten. Where one needs to use MOS2 in comparison to graphite is dependent upon the lubrication engineer. For a commercial project the judgement is an easy one.