Greasing Tools
One of the great aspects of pneumatic tools is that you can stuff a great deal of horsepower in a small package. This makes the tools small, light and easy to work with. Because of the small size of an air motor, the gear train must also be small. (For comparison, take apart a similar horsepower electric tool and note the gigantic gear sets. The electric people can get away with those huge things because their motors are also huge and can, therefore, hide the gears around it. Did I mention that big gears with little horsepower are also cheaper to make? Well, keep that in mind as well.) Small plus a lot of horsepower means the gears are stressed.
With all that power comes a great responsibility – lubrication.
Consistently greasing the gears of your tools is one of the most important maintenance jobs in air tools. A properly greased tool will last longer between rebuilds, be cheaper to repair once those rebuilds come around and provide more consistent power for the operator to do his job efficiently.
Okay, now that we've concluded that grease is a good thing, what are the keys to good geared tool greasing?
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Clean is good. Before you put grease in a tool make sure the grease fitting is clean. Any grit that sits on that surface may get thrown in with the grease right into the gears. Sand and gears don't like each other. It is best to keep them apart.
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Don't use too much. These little gear heads are just that – little. You're not greasing up the front end of your pickup truck. Just a 4-5 good squirts of grease with our grease gun (part number 1100-824) will do the trick. The danger is that if you get too much grease in there, your geared tool will become a gear pump, pumping grease that has no place to go. When there is no place to go, high pressure with high temperatures and high loads result.
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Use the right stuff. There is a lot of stuff going on in a gear train. While we're mostly looking at the gears you also have to remember there are bearings in there. Because of that you must be careful that the grease you use for the gears isn't one that shoots the bearings. Our grease (part number 1100-826) is specially formulated to excel at both tasks.
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Keep on schedule. Grease as it gets old dries out, powders up and becomes a mess. These granules find their way into the gears and bearings and do nobody any good. Putting new grease into the system at regular intervals keeps everything properly lubricated and prevents this gunk up from happening. Angle heads are recommend to be greased every eight hours of use while planetary gears are recommended every 40 hours.
In conclusion, remember grease is your friend. A little bit of maintenence will pay off in a huge way.
