Price is always a major factor in purchasing any product, and lubricants are no exception. Luckily, lubricants are not as dependent upon commodity pricing as other petroleum products, such as gasoline. This is mainly due the large proportion of people who understand that proper lubrication has one of the highest returns on investment of any preventative maintenance or product design expense.
That being said, I often speak with people who simply do not care about anything other than buying the least expensive lubricant. Unfortunately for these people, they are often misled into thinking they are saving money when really they are improperly accounting for the cost of a lubricant. In essence, the upfront cost of any lubricant is only a fraction of its true cost because the majority of lubrication expense should be accounted for in the performance and life expectancy of your equipment!
For example, this past week a potential customer contacted me to see if he could replace his current lubricant priced at over $100 for 14 ounces with ours priced at just under $9 for the same size. The prospective customer asked me to compare the specs of his current grease with Magnalube-G for a high-end CNC lathe, operating at 8,000rpm with bearing diameters ranging from ½ inch to 8 inches. I explained that there were many major differences, such as thickener type, viscosity, base oil composition and some minor ones, as well. In fact, despite the high cost of his current lubricant, Magnalube-G outperformed the product on temperature, corrosion resistance, service life, and others. However, we failed to meet what may have been the most important specification, speed factor. Based on the speed of his bearings, it would be normal for the manufacturer to have specified an oil lubricant, but they had gone out of their way to specify grease with an abnormally high speed factor.
I was eager to land the customer, but I knew immediately that the manufacturer had probably done their homework. So, I called the manufacturer and spoke with someone in the company’s technical department about the reason for selecting the particular grease. The machine in questions was over 20 years old, so the current staff could not tell me why the grease was originally specified, but they did seem confident in the choice and said they sell the item. (As an aside, do not assume that a manufacturer has a conflict of interest if they make money by providing the lubricants they recommend. Not only does this make it easier for their customers to find a specific product, but it also ensures that the equipment is properly maintained! Thus, their customers get more out of their purchase.) In the end, I had to tell my prospect that he should stick with what they recommended even though the price was over 1000% higher. Ultimately, the prospect will be much better off paying for the right lubricant, even though we also sell a very high quality lube.
Making the right decision about your lubricant means that a customer’s short-term expenditure may be saving him big in the long-term. For those of you that want to see it in numbers, here is how you should think about lubrication:
(Cost of Re-Lubrication, Which Includes Labor and Downtime Expended + Cost of the Lubricant) * How Many Times You Need to Apply the Lubricant over the Life of the Equipment = Total Cost of Lubrication.
Therefore, even if your lubricant looks like it’s costing more, if it means that you will have to buy it fewer times and apply it fewer times, then you will have less downtime, and you will expend less man-power applying it. In addition, by using a higher quality lubricant that is optimized for your application, you can gain additional life out of your equipment, which can offer huge returns on your investment. Hopefully you can now see why price should be the last thought in your mind when choosing a lubricant that will result in the best performance.
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