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I’ve always enjoyed spending time with people older than myself. As a young design engineer, I would seek out draftsmen, engineers and managers who were close to retirement and spend quality “think” time with them. This gave me a chance to learn about innovations that took place long before I was born. That’s how I became so fascinated with the 1920s—an era marked by phenomenal thinking and change fueled by the likes of Einstein, Edison, Ford and, of particular interest to readers of this magazine, Bijur.
In 1923, Joseph Bijur revolutionized industry by developing a self-contained, engineered lubrication pump and centralized lubrication-delivery system for oil. Known as the Centralized Single Line Resistance (SLR) system, it was designed for the automobile, which, at the time, had over 50 points the driver had to lubricate on a per-trip, daily or weekly basis. Bijur’s invention reduced this effort to a mere pull of a handle that would send oil everywhere it was needed via a metering device set up at each lubrication point. Centralized automated lubrication was born!
Bijur clearly would have studied the single-point gravity oiling devices in use at the time. They employed a small reservoir, a variable-aperture bleed screw, a spring-tensioned follower plate (for grease) and a wick or brush first developed in the early 1800s for steam-engine bearings. He also probably studied Elijah McCoy’s steam-pressurized single-point oiling device that used engine steam to automatically force-feed lubrication to a point. (This product worked so well that from the 1870s on, railroads would shun other designs in favor of “the real McCoy.”)
Later, Bijur harnessed the automobile’s own vacuum system to truly automate his lubrication system, making his product a common part of every car in the ’30s and ’40s (and up until 1961 on Rolls-Royce cars). It also became a standard option in the machine-tool industry, which ultimately led to it being the most copied automated lubrication system ever. It was so efficient that the rate of mechanical failures was reduced to a third of what it had been previously. Tripling equipment life was great for the equipment itself—but not so good for those who were selling OEM automotive parts!
In 1924, a year after Bijur’s centralized system hit the market, Chicago’s Alemite Die Casting bought out Cleveland’s Allyne-Zerk Company. The deal mated Alemite’s High-Pressure Lubricating grease gun (designed in 1916) with Oscar Zerk’s compact push-style grease and oil fitting. This union was significant in that the grease zerk fitting eventually replaced Bijur’s centralized system, based on cost—and, of course, the fact that many more parts could be sold!
Bijur went on to introduce other automated lubrication systems, as did companies like Trabon (the Series Progressive Divider system); Lincoln (the Single Line Positive Displacement Injector system); Farval (the Dualine Positive Displacement Injector system); and Tecalamit (the Pump-to-Point system). All of these players essentially produced iterations of each other’s designs—and today offer sophisticated computer-controlled devices that self-diagnose system effectiveness.
Two things haven’t changed over time: 1) Automated lubrication systems still triple effective equipment life; and 2) Manual greasing/oiling systems are still cheap to purchase, but terribly expensive to manage effectively. Isn’t it about time that you learned from the past? Isn’t it time to triple-size your equipment’s life? LMT
-Written by Ken Bannister, Contributing Editor for Lubrication Management & Technology
Original article can be found here.
To all Bijur Delimon distributors:
BDI is pleased to announce the addition of model 55105 Lube Point Monitor to our product family. This monitor can be mounted at or near the inlet on critical lube points. The 55105 can be fed oil or grease from any Dualine/PDI or Series Progressive lubrication system.
For more information visit www.bijurdelimon.com or call (800) 631-0168.
~ Bijur Delimon International
Bijur Delimon International participated in Hydrovision 2010 in Charlotte, NC July 27th-29th, 2010. This was the largest gathering of the year for Hydropower professionals from throughout the world. Nearly 3,000 people attended and there were over 250 exhibitors at the show. BDI featured our Farval Dualine Systems which are the industry standard for turbine wicket gate lubrication.
In addition, our sister companies SM Seals, Flexider Industrial and Hellan Fluid Strainers also participated.
HydroVision 2010 booth
Bijur Delimon section
Hellan Strainers section
SM Seals section
Flexider section
HydroVision 2010 group
We have added 2 new products to our website:
The SC400 Controller is a full featured lubrication control, offering “two plus one” functionality: Two independent lubrication zones may be programmed with a single controller, plus control of one automatic reservoir fill system.
The Oil Streak Sensor is designed to detect oil traces in the air tube, down to 5mm3/min. The product has been designed using a master and slave concept. The slave sensors may be piggybacked to the master sensor, up to a maximum of 3, or may be remotely connected via an interconnecting cable.
Check them out and see if they would be useful additions for your business.
The Resources section on bijurdelimon.com has officially launched. Here you have access to our Application Success library, which is continually being expanded. Below you will find some of the new Application Success additions to the section. If there are any industries or products you’d like to see featured in an Application story feel free to let us know in the comments section.
Mobile Off-road & On-road
To those in the maintenance department, precision lubrication is a no-brainer. It stands to reason that lubrication excellence is a good investment. Put simply, machines run better when they are properly lubricated. However, for those in other parts of the organization who don’t understand the nuances of elastohydrodynamic lubrication, lithium complex grease thickeners or filtration beta ratios (or perhaps don’t care!), spending money on lubrication upgrades and improvements is simply another overhead cost. From this viewpoint, lubrication, like every other cost, should be minimized to help the organization survive in today’s ultracompetitive global marketplace.
So how do we convince management that spending money on lubrication and other reliability-based maintenance improvement initiatives is a good idea? After all, we in maintenance understand that such improvements must make a difference. Surely management should be able to see the value that improved lubrication can have on equipment and productivity.
Read Full Article from Machinery Lubrication Magazine
-Mark Barnes, Noria Corporation, “Lubrication – Maintenance Cost or Opportunity?”. Machinery Lubrication Magazine. July 2005
Maintaining properly lubricated machinery is an important part of any lubrication program. Without administering lubricant at correct intervals with the proper amount, a machine can experience costly failures. Centralized lubrication systems are a common tool used in industry to distribute a precise amount of lubricant to specific locations at specific times through the use of programmable timers, lubricant pumps and lubricant injectors.
Centralized lubrication systems were introduced in the mid-1930s. Since then, much research has concentrated on resolving the flow issues of viscous lubricants, such as grease, to deliver the fluid properly to its designated points. Advancements in technology have created today’s centralized lubrication systems with precise delivery methods for a wide range of industrial applications. Centralized lubrication systems are sometimes referred to as automatic lubrication systems because they are completely or mostly computerized in the process of lubricant dispensing. These systems eliminate the risk of human error and increase precision when an application requires the lubrication of many components on numerous machines.
Centralized lubrication can deliver either grease or oil to a lubrication point. The basic operation of a centralized system includes the following: The system controller and injectors are preset to deliver a specific amount of lubricant at a specific interval. To deliver the lubricant, the lubricant pump is activated by the controller, via an air solenoid. This builds pressure in the lines, causing the grease to flow out of the injectors. A pressure switch is incorporated in the system to deactivate the pump once the lubricant injection is complete. In the last step of this process, the system directs any lubricant remaining in the lines back into the reservoir by venting.
Technological advancements have created many products for controlling and monitoring centralized lubrication systems that further increase the precision and reliability of these systems. Lubricant injectors, system plumbing and lubricant reservoirs are commonly monitored by alarms. An alert signal is sent when an undesirable flow pattern exists or when the lubricant reservoir is low. Incorporating such alarms into a system is useful in preventive maintenance. Furthermore, to prolong maintenance intervals, high-capacity lubricant reservoirs can be incorporated into the systems and typically hold double the volume of the common system reservoir.
-Derek Destefano and Nguyen Truong, Noria Corporation, “Selecting Centralized Lubrication Systems”. Machinery Lubrication Magazine. November 2007.
Visit our website for more information!
Welcome to a New Year and the new Bijur Delimon Lubrication Blog. We are launching this blog to share our many years of experience in assisting customers with evaluating or optimizing the use of automatic lubrication systems on their equipment. Our goal is to offer helpful tips on everything from grease guns and single point lubricators to complex centralized lubrication systems covering hundreds of bearings.
You can expect to see future articles from many different field and applications people who will share their decades of experience with you. We hope this site will offer timely and in-depth content that will keep our readers up to date with the latest industry trends. Check back Monday (01/11) for our new Application Success stories!
We want to hear from you too. What topics would you find valuable? Please let us know if you have an idea. Our blog is intended to provide features and content for you. Thanks in advance for your feedback.
-Jim Carse
