OH, SH#T! A LUBE TECH'S LESSONS LEARNED

The term “OH, SH#T” (or OS! as I'll refer to it from now on) usually means something bad has happened, but this isn't always true. Sometimes, it can come from something great happening, like finding a new, faster, easier, or more efficient way of performing a lubrication task.

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As a Lubrication Specialist for the past 6 years, I have had several of these moments, both good and bad. Sometimes, if you're lucky, a healthy combination of both will lead to a new learning experience. If you are not continuously learning and growing (sometimes painfully) from new experiences, you risk becoming stagnant.

Here are a few of my OS! lubrication moments.

First OS! Lesson

Bullseye sight glasses are a wonderful invention that provides a window into the interior of a machine to examine the level of lubricant inside the reservoir. In one case, however, they led to my first OS! moment.

I installed 12mm bullseye sight glasses on about 24 new gearboxes and filled them to the proper gear oil level. Although they're not very big, 12mm sight glasses still give you an appropriate level, or so I thought.

I saw the oil flow into the sight glass for the first time, so I knew I had the level right. The gearbox was inspected weekly, including visually inspecting the oil level in the sight glass. The glass always had oil, even after nearly five months of taking monthly samples. As a new lubrication tech, I assumed that maybe I had over filled the gearbox that first time.

After pulling five monthly samples of 5 ounces (four for the sample and a 1-ounce purge amount), I became curious about how I still had the proper oil level in the gearbox and decided to investigate further.

During the investigation, the sight glass was pulled. The gearbox’s oil level was about half what it should have been, but the sight glass still showed that it had the same amount of oil even after it was pulled from the gearbox.

OS! (Not Good)