Dry lubrication answers modern product demands
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Kluber Lubrication GB product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team
Nov 18, 2003
The trend towards dry lubrication has been borne out of the need for performance, quality, user-friendliness, cost reduction and eco-compatibility.
There is no doubt that lubricating oils and greases ("wet" lubricants) are ideal for reducing friction and wear in many cases.
However, their typical properties also set their limits.
Like many other materials they only function in a certain temperature range, they may be washed away by water or may contaminate the area around the friction point.
Progress towards dry lubrication is borne out of the need for performance, quality, user-friendliness, cost reduction and eco-compatibility.
Life-cost and integrity of components is under ever closer scrutiny, particularly and literally in safety components such as car seatbelt mechanisms, leading to demands that the lubricant functions just as efficiently in 10 years or more as it did on the very first day.
Dry lubricants offer advantages wherever: traditional lubricants cause contamination; penetration of traditional lubricants may cause malfunction; mass produced components are auto-processed and oils and greases would impede that process; service temperature limits of oils and greases are exceeded; water, aggressive media, dust have an impact on the friction point; uniform tribological conditions are required in a wide temperature range; or the entire component requires protection against corrosion.
Over the years, Kluber Lubrication has developed and introduced special dry lubricant formulations to allow designers to integrate life-time lubrication into systems and so remove the need to provide for relubrication.
Using BCE and BCA technology Kluber Lubrication gives designers using mechanical and/or elastomer components scope to build-in lifetime lubrication solutions using dry lubricants in the form of air-drying, thermo-setting, water-based, solvent-based or hot-dip lubricants.
The principle is well known from cooking: an egg won't stick to a nonstick frying pan even without using fat or oil owing to a bonded coating on the pan.
In dry lubrication a thin layer is applied to the component and the principle is therefore similar.
Typically these materials consist of solid lubricants, a binder, additives and a carrier (acting as a distributor during application).
The active film thickness is between 5 and 15 microns depending on the applied product.
Dry lubricants can be applied in various ways such as immersion, spraying, dip-spin or electrostatic coating.
Wear protection is not achieved by hardness (as with hard material coatings for example) but by optimising friction coefficients and sliding characteristics which in comparison renders them very inexpensive surfaces.
Thanks to the thin layers the shear strains inside the layer are not excessive and when frictional stresses are encountered the layer of bonded coating reduces friction and therefore torque resulting in reduced energy requirement.
In the beginning this technology was mainly used in the aerospace industry.
But today it is established far wider - a major field being in the automotive industry where efficient, high-performance lubrication solutions are required for example in high temperature turbo-charger fittings; even windscreen wiper blades are lubricated with a special dry lubricant.
The potential applications are endless, and the Kluber Lubrication product range includes dry lubrication technology for: metal-metal, metal-plastic, plastic-plastic or even metal-wood or plastic-wood pairings.
In terms of applications, dry lubrication is limited only by the imagination of the designer.
But here are a few examples: mechanical face, rotary shaft lip, labyrinth seals; gears - spur, bevel, worm - small plastic gears; bearings - rolling, sintered or plain; shaft - hub connections - keyed, spline, power-locking; hydraulics and pneumatics - pumps, cylinders, valves, compressors; electrical contacts - plug-in, sliding; rubber components; nuts, bolts, screws and other fastenings; chains; and vacuum and radiation applications.
Of course dry lubricants can also be used in conjunction with wet lubricants in extreme demands to effect the longest possible component life.
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Contact Kluber Lubrication GB
Tel +44 1422 319146
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