Testimonials
Quinplex® 4024 lubricant significantly improved machinery efficiency and reduced maintenance at a large creamery.
key takeaways
Challenge
The co-op’s four Benz Hilgers butter wrappers required extensive daily lubrication with commercial grease, consuming one tube per unit and one hour of labor, yet still experienced excessive wear on cams, bushings, and bearings.
LE solution
Mark Nickel, a lubrication consultant, recommended Quinplex® Food Machinery Lubricant (4024) in January 1987 for its USDA authorization and H1 rating, making it suitable for the food processing industry.
Results
Switching to Quinplex 4024 lubricant 25 years ago has eliminated production losses due to wear, reduced lubricant applications from daily to weekly, saved four pounds of grease weekly, and freed up four hours of maintenance labor per week.
Customer Profile
A large co-operative creamery located in Tulare, California, is a dairy products processing facility making powdered milk, milk, butter, cream cheese, yogurt and cottage cheese. This co-op facility processes over 15 million pounds of raw milk daily.
Application
One of the pieces of equipment used in this process are the Benz Hilgers model 8345 butter wrappers. They mold, wrap and box one-lb. solid blocks of various brand names of butter. It produces at a rate of 60 to 80 one-lb. boxes per minute. Other models produce 1/4-lb. blocks of butter. This plant runs eight such units.
Challenge
The Benz Hilgers butter wrapper has 135 zerk fittings to lubricate, and is a very complex and expensive piece of machinery. This co-op has four of these units. While using a commercial grade grease, lubrication requirements were extensive—one tube of grease for two bull gears and 135 zerk fittings. It also took one hour labor each day to do this maintenance. Even with this lubrication schedule, the co-op was still experiencing cam, bushing and bearing wear more rapidly than they felt was normal. They evaluated a number of conventional EP (extreme pressure) greases, as well as specialty food grade lubricants, but could find no improvement in performance.
LE Solution
In January of 1987, Mark Nickel, LE lubrication consultant, recommended Quinplex® Food Machinery Lubricant (4024) for this application. This lubricant is USDA authorized and rated H1 for the food processing industry.
Results
Since converting to Quinplex 4024, 25 years ago, the units have had exceptional wear results with no lost production due to wear of lubricant related components. Lubricant consumption has also been reduced from daily applications to once per week. This is important because the Benz Hilgers wrapping machines operate 15 hours a day, five days a week. Using Quinplex 4024 has freed up four hours of labor per week for maintenance personnel to concentrate on other pressing maintenance needs, as well as saving four pounds of grease per week.