Case Study 02 · Klüber Lubrication
Case Study 02 · Klüber Lubrication
The drive pinion was being replaced every 2–3 years. A detailed gear inspection found what no lubricant change could have fixed, then corrected it with the drive still running.
The customer is one of north India's largest paper manufacturers, producing approximately 1,200 metric tons per day. At this scale, even minor mechanical inefficiencies ripple across the production line, making equipment reliability a core priority.
The Drum Pulper breaks raw material down into fibre at the head of the process. Its open gear drive operates under heavy rotational torque and continuous hydration loads, making it one of the heaviest mechanical investments on the plant floor.
The drive pinion of the Drum Pulper's open gear was wearing out years ahead of its expected service life. Replacing it had become a regular, scheduled maintenance task rather than a rare intervention.
Each replacement cycle cost around ₹8 lakh for a component that should last close to a decade, before counting the downtime, planning effort and production risk that come with changing out a drive pinion.
When Compac's tribology experts arrived on-site, a fresh pinion had just been installed. Rather than treating the issue as a simple lubricant switch, the team conducted a thorough mechanical audit of the drive system.
Detailed inspection of the gear and pinion arrangement revealed an improper, fluctuating meshing pattern across the tooth flank between the girth gear and the newly installed pinion.
The tooth contact area was continuously shifting during rotation, producing localised pressure spikes instead of distributing force evenly across the flank.
Machining marks and high spots on the new pinion teeth were concentrating friction loads, accelerating wear before the metal could naturally bed in.
The existing lubricant was designed for film retention, with no capability to correct surface geometry or re-balance pressure spikes. Recycled used lubricant was adding contamination and uneven wear of its own.
The pinion itself was not the root cause. Uneven load distribution, driven by a fluctuating contact pattern and microscopic high spots on the tooth flanks, was concentrating the drive's full torque onto a fraction of the designed contact area. Every replacement pinion inherited the same conditions, which is why each one bought only two to three years of service.
Compac's tribologists specified a two-stage Klüber system: Grafloscon D-SG 00 Ultra, a repair lubricant engineered to correct tooth flank geometry under load, followed by Klüberfluid C-F 3 Ultra, a high-viscosity operational lubricant for long-term protection.
Klüber classifies D-SG 00 Ultra as a type D repair lubricant, and it works differently from an ordinary open gear grease. Its active compounds erode material precisely where the flanks are overloaded, diluting microscopic high spots and smoothing machining marks, so the load redistributes across the full tooth flank instead of concentrating on one band. Because the compound removes metal, the amount and the application time control the result. That is why Klüber restricts it to manual application by qualified engineers rather than an automatic spray system.
Klüber's own guidance is that the primary cause of the damage must be addressed before any repair lubrication begins, otherwise the damage returns. That is what the inspection delivered. The repair lubricant was applied to the load-carrying flanks of both the pinion and the girth gear, and Compac's specialists monitored the drive on-site across 48 hours of live operation, tracking contact pattern progression, surface temperature distribution and flank load smoothing. The drive kept running throughout. Under a repair lubricant, load helps rather than hinders the correction.
Once the flanks were smooth and the contact ratio had opened up, the drive was handed over to Klüberfluid C-F 3 Ultra for service. At 16,500 mm²/s at 40 °C it builds a lubricant film of roughly 20 microns in the pitch circle, comfortably into full elastohydrodynamic (EHL) separation of the tooth flanks, so consumption can be pulled back to an optimum level. Applied fresh as a transparent fluid, it also ends the recycling of used lubricant and keeps inspection results readable.
Uneven, shifting contact across the tooth flank.
Contact band extended across the working flank.
Machining marks and high spots on the new teeth.
High spots diluted, flanks smoothed under load.
Reported after implementation, with quarterly follow-up inspections.
Pinion service life
Lubricant consumption, at optimised quantity
Recycled lubricant in the system
Tooth contact and load distribution across the flank
Compac's technical team conducts on-site gear inspections and contact pattern checks at the plant every quarter, ensuring the drive continues to operate reliably year after year.
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