Absolute genius automatic lubricator

At last - a circuit diagram that I can follow!

As an engineer, the simpler the way something is done the more respect you have for the people that designed it.

I honestly thought this was going to be a, uh, different kind of automatic lubricator. A personal one, if you will. This channel can really go either way with product tear downs.

The difficulty with this kind of "simple" system isn't just designing it - it's being able to manufacture every element with enough accuracy that it will work reliably and at a consistent speed.

I have some zinc air 9 volt batteries that are sealed inside an aluminized bag. They have been sitting around for about 5 years and the bags swelled up and were pressurized. The batteries are just button cells in series inside a 9 volt battery sized case. I guess this chemistry can generate a lot of gas. This is a really clever application! Someone was seriously thinking outside the box when they came up with this one.

As a maintenance engineer, it's also important to remember that the daily maintenance with cleaning and lubrication is also an inspection of the machine. When the operator is performing routine maintenance, small leaks or other issues can be detected early, preventing larger issues if dealt with early enough. I have no doubt that automatic lubricators are useful in the right place, though.

Devilishly simple!

When I worked in a factory that built mining equipment, we tried using auto-greasers, but had to go back to having employees do the greasing because the auto-greasers would get broken when parts would bump them. Lubricator jobs were highly coveted, and almost never came up for bid. Since it was a really well paying job that you rode around on a cart with a dozen different greases and oils, following a schedule, it became a short-timer job that people would use to pad out their last few years with the company.

A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Who on earth came up with this idea? Such an elegant system.

I installed these on a few machines on site, but never knew how they worked or took one to pieces. Grease is wonderful stuff, apart from when it’s used on motor bearings. We used to get a job method on site, which would tell you to grease the bearings on some motors. The motors could weigh 300KG+ and had a bearing at the front and rear, the only problem was that if you did pump grease into the grease nipple, the grease would often enter the motor and short out the windings, then the motor would fail. The worst motor failure I ever saw was when a large motor with a 2” diameter output shaft failed. The front bearing seized, causing the output shaft to become very hot, so that that the shaft bent like a piece of rubber, this then caused all the mounting bolts on the motor to shear and the coupling to disintegrate. If you had been near it when this happened, you would have needed a change of underwear for sure 😂

I remember taking one of these SKF SYSTEM 24 cartridges apart a few years ago. The old ones uses discrete SMD resistors in series and a PCB inside instead of that carbon wiper. Never figured out how they worked back then, but this video answers pretty much everything! Pretty impressive that those two tiny cells can generate enough gas to push so much grease out.

As a previous SKF sales person for many years, it was great to see your presentation, great work.

I worked for a company that repaired / rewound Electric Motors. We had a local customer who called us in to look at a motor bearing that was noisy. It was an old Brook Imperial frame Crompton Parkinson motor, only about 20HP but built like a tank. They employed an old boy to go around and grease the motor bearings once a week. There was a grease nipple on each of the bearing housings and also a bolt on the the bottom of the housing. You were supposed to undo the bolt and let the old grease ooze out the bottom as the fresh grease went in the top. I don't think he's ever done that, as when we took the end shields off they were completely filled with grease ( there was a pressed metal dome insert in the end shields to direct the air from the cooling fan ) We easily filled two large grease tins from the stuff in the compacted end shields.

This is definitely proof that a great deal of genius lies in simplicity. A basic electrochemical reaction that's been around forever, used to generate constant, steady pressure. It's really an awesome design, and I applaud the team that came up with it.

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." - Einstein "Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry This doesn't quite eliminate the need for maintenance, as someone still has to go round replacing the lubrication syringes when they reach the end of their lives, but it's damn close!

Whoever developed that must have been an expert in the battery technology having alot of knowledge about the gas release and pressures involved.

Hi Clive, I know a little about zinc-air batteries. Camera light meters used to use mercury batteries because they emit a very constant voltage until they die, and they then suddenly drop to zero. This was obviously very important for metering, especially with simple light meters. When mercury cells were outlawed, the recommended replacements were zinc-air cells because they have the same flat-discharge curve as mercury cells. That fits your thought about the voltage not dropping off.

The way that they've exploited the characteristics of a standard zinc-air battery to do the gas generation is absolutely amazing.

Wow! I would never have guessed that the gas release from such small things can be controlled so precisely and over such a long time!