Meet Nye - Jeremy Luchies

Meet Jeremy Luchies, Nye’s newest Regional Engineering Manager and our in-house bearing expert. With more than 18 years of experience at leading companies within the bearing industry, Jeremy has in-depth knowledge of bearing designs and their corresponding lubrication requirements. We sat down with Jeremy to ask him the most common questions Nye gets about bearing lubrication.

What are the benefits that a lubricant provides to a bearing?

Depending on the application and operating conditions, there are many benefits that a given lubricant may offer, but its’ primary purposes are to reduce direct metal-on-metal contact between the rolling elements, raceways and cage to minimize friction and wear. Other benefits of a lubricant can include, dampening, corrosion resistance, wash out resistance, low particle generation, low outgassing, thermal conductance, electrical conductance and assembly aids. However, the ideal bearing lubricant will help a bearing achieve the calculated bearing L₁₀ fatigue life, in hours or revolutions, before experiencing fatigue failure.  

What is one of the most common misconceptions you hear about bearing lubricants?

One of the most common misconceptions about bearing lubricants is that a few drops of oil per bearing row will provide adequate lubrication for many years of service. Service life is largely dependent on the duty cycle, number of cycles required over the life of the assembly, applied loading, operating temperature and environmental conditions.

Lubricating a bearing with only a few drops of oil, with no relubrication frequency or drip applicator, will result in the bearing(s) operating in a mixed-to-boundary lubrication regime. Operation in these lubrication regimes typically results in increased adhesive wear generation between the rolling elements and raceways, which can eventually lead to bearing performance issues and be designated as a “bearing failure”.

The calculated bearing L₁₀ fatigue life for a given bearing assumes that the bearing always maintains an adequate lubrication film thickness throughout its’ life. However, most bearings fail due to improperly selected lubricants based on the application / operating conditions, contamination issues and or mounting / installation issues. An in-depth bearing failure analysis (FA) by your bearing supplier can be very beneficial in helping to identify potential causes for the bearing failures being experienced, as well as identifying possible resolutions for increased bearing life. An alternate lubricant may be part of the solution and our engineers at Nye can help point you in the right direction.

Often, lubricants are specified by the bearing manufacturer. What is the downside of this?

Many times, the bearing manufacturer’s use “general purpose” greases in their sealed bearings, which may work great for many commercial / industrial bearing applications. However, general-purpose greases may not be ideal for a number of specialty applications that have unique operating requirements. In such cases, it is best to engage directly with the bearing and lubricant manufacturer to help ensure the ideal lubricant is selected. Lubricant manufacturers are always developing new formulation technologies to address unique application challenges, so by engaging with both the bearing manufacturer and lubricant manufacturer, customers will benefit from the latest lubricant technologies available for their  new application to maximize bearing life and application performance.  

What common mistakes do people make when lubricating their bearings?

One of the most common mistakes that customers make when lubricating a bearing is not ensuring that the bearing is sufficiently cleaned to remove the preservative oils applied by the bearing manufacturer prior to lubricating the bearing with the specified lubricant. The solvent used to clean the preservative oil out of the bearing must also be compatible with the lubricant being applied. If it is not, then the applied lubricant will not sufficiently wet the bearing internal surfaces and could result in premature lubricant failure.

Another common mistake is determining how much lubricant should be applied to a bearing. The amount of lubricant that is recommended is largely dependent on the application and operating conditions. Most industrial bearings are filled approximately 33% full, whereas a bearing used in a Semiconductor wafer transfer robot may only be filled 5 - 10% full due to their respective operating condition differences. Grease volume for specialty bearings that are used in sensitive applications is typically carefully metered by weight in grams, whereas a large bearing or one that may be less sensitive to lubricant volume differences may be lubricated with a specified volume in CC’s.  

What is the proper way to lubricate a bearing?

Believe it or not, there is a proper way to apply lubricant to a bearing, especially for applications with very sensitive performance criteria. Lubricant is typically applied manually by a syringe or by a semi-automated lubrication system with appropriately sized tips to carefully meter the specified amount of grease into each bearing. Unless the lubricant being applied is a silicone-based lubricant, the syringe must be silicone-free. The lubricant should be forced into the rolling element path as much as possible while it is being applied because that is where the lubricant is actually needed. Once the specified lubricant volume has been applied, the bearing should be rotated a minimum of 10 to 20 full revolutions to evenly distribute the lubricant within the bearing prior to installation.   

What is your favorite part about working at Nye?

As a Regional Engineering Manager at Nye I get the opportunity to work closely with customers in both their new product developments as well as working through identifying solutions to their application problems, which I greatly enjoy and is often personally rewarding. Even though I have worked closely with Nye for a relatively long period of time, I am still learning something new about Nye products and the many diverse applications that we serve every day. This would not be possible without my outstanding colleagues that are always willing to share knowledge and best practices with one another. Our technical team is second to none, and our R&D and Test Lab teams are very creative in their development of new products based on the challenges brought in from the sales team’s input from our customer base.

About the Author – Jeremy Luchies

In his 18 years in the bearing industry Jeremy worked with specialized bearings including those in semiconductor, medical, automotive manufacturing, defense and aerospace applications. Although new to Nye, he has worked closely with Nye lubricants over the past approximately 15 years with testing and utilizing Nye’s Semicon lubricant offerings to maximize specialty ball bearing life under the demanding operating conditions of Semicon robots and process equipment.