Controlling the contaminant flow of your hydraulic, lubricant or fuel reservoirs is one of the simplest goals in achieving Total Systems Cleanliness.

As an equipment owner or manager, the last thing that you want to find in your system is contamination. After all, that means downtime, which ultimately costs you time and money. Contamination always somehow sneaks its way into our systems, which may leave you asking, how does it get in there and what are we supposed to do about it?

The Problem: Hydraulic Pump Failure 

Pumps are the heart of hydraulic systems. When the pump fails, the entire system is down until the pump is operational again. This poses a serious threat to any operation relying on hydraulic systems for productivity.

Recently, a hydraulic valve manufacturer was losing 25 pumps a year on their centralized hydraulic system at a cost of $2,440 each -- and that’s only the pump cost. When you account for maintenance resources, lost oil and lost production, each failure costs ~$25,320.

The Problem

Today’s oil suppliers are often required to provide fluid at or below a specified ISO Cleanliness Code. One such supplier was experiencing short filter element life (15 days) on the system (7 element multi-round housing) used to achieve the required ISO Cleanliness Code of 18/16/13 in a single pass as 15W-40 oil is transferred from their bulk storage tanks to tanker trucks for delivery.

When gearboxes go down, it’s generally because of contamination. This is a costly repair on its own, but once you include the loss of production from downtime, the cost can soar to astronomical figures. Sadly, though, sometimes gearbox failure happens, which wastes your time and money. Let’s take a look at some of the main causes of gearbox contamination and how you can prevent it.