looking at a used 40 ton machine,i am totally clueless on oil sample stuff.what is good, what is ok, and what is a disaster waiting to happen??looked at one that had a 400ppm iron on the hydraulic side,is this hoe about to have a heart attack???is hydraulic side more important to you then the engine side samples??
Oil analysis is a bit like "where do you start". One specific result isn't really an indication of the health of the system, what the people who specialize in oil analysis interpretation look for are trends over time. Something like - how is the iron in the system behaving, steady, rising slowly (what you might expect as the system wears) or rising fast (trouble brewing). One sample result really isn't a good indicator, but to me 400ppm of iron in a hydraulic system would sound alarm bells. Does the analysis have an ISO Code listed..? That's an indication of system cleanliness and a clean hydraulic system is one that will live a long happy life. The ISO Code will look something like 18/15, or 20/18/15 on the analysis report.
Along with the iron reading, what is the Silicon reading. That is dirt.
silicon was 48 ppm.i did not see a iso code what would the 18/15 numbers mean or would it be explained on the analysis report.
48ppm and it's full of dirt. Silicon should ideally be less than 10ppm at oil change time. How many operating hours were on the oil when it was sampled? All the elements in the analysis are generally up to 5 microns in size. ISO code is basically a measurement of the total quantity of larger particles in unit volume of the sample. It does not differentiate between what material they are, simply their size. Generally the measurements are up to 4 microns, up to 6 microns, and up to 14 microns. The ISO Code number simply reflects how many particles were in the sample. An increase of 1 in the code means the number of particles in the sample has doubled. New or top up oils the target is 16/13, for a hydraulic system the target would be no higher than 18/15. The increase of 2 in the ISO between new oil and used oil indicates the number of particles in the sample has multiplied by 4. Here's a link to an article about ISO Code that probably explains it better. http://www.machinerylubrication.com/Read/28979/iso-cleanliness-code
sorry did not specify 48ppm was hydraulic side, engine side was 7ppm,thanks for the machine lube chart Nige, lots of info on there!!!!
48ppm is still far too much for a hydraulic system. Depending on the oil hours the silicon should still be less than 10, ideally less than 5ppm.