Should You Leave The Task Of Lubrication to The New Mechanics?

At many industrial facilities, the job of tool lubrication is typically assigned to a newly hired mechanic who has very little or no lubrication knowledge and just learning the ins and outs of the plant. These mechanics are provided a grease gun and told to lubricate some crucial points on a particular line or possibly the entire plant.

To the maintenance supervisor, this task seems like an ideal way to make familiar the other person with the plant’s equipment. While a new mechanic, is performing a crucial task to help increase the bearing life. In fact, both the mechanic and supervisor are right, but they might be missing something.

Certainly, assigning a new mechanic the job of lubricating equipment will help him be familiarize with the plant’s equipment, but did you understand what cost you are paying for this? The new mechanic might be thinking in mind that you are performing a crucial task, but is this the right way to increase the bearing life?

The answer depends upon how well they train the new mechanic. In fact, more than 35% of bearing failures happen due to improper lubrication. An enthusiastic but not very well trained lube tech with a grease gun can possibly become a reason for premature bearing failures and the reason being over greasing or in other cases, lack of lubrication practices.

So here the question arises...

Should you leave the task of motor lubrication to the new mechanics?

Well! The answer to this question is that unless the mechanic knows about the healthy lubrication practices, you shouldn't assign this task to him otherwise it can pay you a lot for the repairs.