Dry Lube Cage Match
Which dry lubrication is the best?
Traditionally, beverage bottlers lubricate their conveyors with soap and water systems to prevent bottles from tipping over and extend the life of their wearstrips. With an eye on cost savings and sustainability, bottlers have been replacing these systems with “dry” lubricants that perform the same function, saving a tremendous amount of water. Most dry lubricants used for bottling aren’t actually dry, but are highly concentrated and stay on the chain surface for long periods of time. All of them were pretty good, and most dry lubricants even outperform soap and water lubes by a significant margin.
We’ve done a side by side comparison of several commercially available dry lubes with an eye on two factors:
1. How much do they reduce the friction between the conveyor and the product?
2. How clean is the lubrication? How much build of gunk and dirt do we see over time?
We’ve ranked six dry lube brands by this criteria and here are the results.
Friction Reduction Ranking
- ICC’s Dry Traxx
- Johnson Diversey’s Dry Tech V
- Hartness DCL
- Drylube.co.uk
- Ecolabs DryExx
- SKF
- No lube (control group)
Head to head lube test conveyor
Our testing methodology was simple. We created a multi-lane conveyor that we could raise up on one side, which created an incline. We slowly lifted one side of the conveyor and saw which of the products started sliding back first. Here are some important notes we took from our comparison:
- For this test we used PET beverage bottles.
- PTFE based lubricants (ICC, Johnson Diversey, and Hartness) strongly outperformed the silicone based lubes in reducing the friction between conveyor chain and PET bottles
- The conveyor chains used in the test were Rexnord Platinum Series (PS) 770.
- The tests were conducted over 110 minutes of run time
- 3ml of each lubrication was used on each chain.
- Three separate tests were performed
Sanitation Ranking
When looking at sanitation issues, we looked for what the chain and product looked like after a few hours of run time. Was there dust or dirt build up? Did we see any waxy or gooey build up in the knuckles of the chain? Here are some notes we took from the cleanliness comparison.
- Drylube.co.uk, EcoLabs, and ICC strongly outperformed the others in this category.
- The EcoLabs and DryLube.co.uk lubrication may have completely dried off during the 110 minute test.
ICC's Dry Traxx RTU is our recommended dry lubrication
We hope this comparison helps your company make their decision about which lubrication is best for you. Out of all the lubrications we’ve seen, we recommend ICC’s Dry Traxx RTU. It’s the best balance of performance and cleanliness and it’s also rated H1 and H2 for food contact.
For additional questions about dry lube or for a quote on a dry lube application system for a new or existing conveyor system, contact us today. All we need to know is the number of lubrication points.
April 15th, 2010 at 6:37 pm
Thank you Gary for your kind words about the product I sell ( Dry Traxx), but I conpletely disagree with your assesement on the santtation ranking on lubes. I have not seen the Dry lube.co. Uk run; however, I have seen numerous plants running Ecolab’s dry lube and have noticed a conciderable buildup of black goo on surface of chains while running thier product. When lines were washed and switched to Dry Traxx, the black goo would not reappear. If you have any technical questions concerning these lubes, feel free to contact me at the email above…..
April 29th, 2010 at 9:59 am
From our testing, Eco Lab’s lube is very clean if applied properly. I have also seen it used in actual plants and it always seemed very clean. From a performance standpoint, it didn’t seem to reduce the friction as much as Dry Traxx, Hartness DCL and others, so that’s why we haven’t used it. I think it’s a decent replacement for a soap and water system if that’s all you need. Cost is a whole different issue, and I don’t know how it stacks up against other dry lubes. Dry Traxx’s price is very reasonable.