Special fluids meet particular requirements

Castrol supplies Baker Oil Tools with metalworking fluids for machining a range of materials that includes stainless steels, carbon steels and Inconel nickel and chrome-based special alloys.

Two Baker Oil Tools plants in Scotland - one at Bridge of Don near Aberdeen and the other at East Kilbride - manufacture down-hole completions and other equipment for export to oil fields around the world.

Between them, the machine shops at both locations have over a hundred CNC and other types of machines and more than two-hundred operators dedicated to machining the pipes, valves and other equipment used in subsea applications.

Castrol supplies both sites with metalworking fluids for machining a range of materials that includes stainless steels, carbon steels and Inconel nickel and chrome-based special alloys.

For many companies the decision to buy so-called commodity products such as metalworking fluids would be biased towards the lowest price.

Not so for Baker Oil Tools, says Willie Mitchell, Maintenance Superintendent at the Bridge of Don site, who maintains that service is even more important.

Which is why, in spite of a recent approach by another leading oil company, Castrol continues to supply cutting fluids to both sites, as it has done for more than ten years since being asked to recommend a cutting fluid to solve a problem with the previous supplier's fluid that had led to poor sump life.

Baker Oil Tools does, however, carry out its own fluid maintenance but since Castrol introduced its Alusol cutting fluid, Mitchell and his counterpart at East Kilbride, HSE Manager John Stirling, both rely heavily on Castrol's Area Manager who visits every two weeks to monitor the fluids pH and bacteria levels and collects samples for analysis at Castrol's own laboratory.

Commenting on the service, Mitchell says Castrol has helped both sites to formalise their maintenance routines by introducing its scheduled maintenance system, which produces schedules showing tasks that need to be carried out daily, weekly or monthly.

Stirling agrees and adds that Castrol has also developed two special fluids to meet Baker Oil Tools' particular requirements - one a cutting fluid and the other a honing oil.

Both sites have also benefited from a series of Castrol training courses for operators and other machine shop staff, to help appreciate the role of cutting fluids and explain how to get the best from them.

Mitchell says the knowledge Castrol has passed on gave machine shop staff more confidence and greatly improved their fluid management capability.

"The training ensures that both sides are working together", he says, quoting as an example: "When the reports from the oil sampling come back, Castrol lets us know if and when we need to adjust concentrations etc to maintain the fluids in peak condition".

As part of the relationship Baker Oil Tools and Castrol are also committed to an on-going cost reduction programme, which includes plans to install an economiser in order to recycle cutting fluid and greatly reduce the amount of waste that requires disposal.

In addition, the companies are discussing an extension of the current oil sampling and analysis service to incorporate predictive maintenance.

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