WORKSHOP: An auto lubricator or greaser ensures moving parts always have enough of the slippy stuff, with the added bonus that you have less to do with the grease gun. We watch maker Groeneveld-Beka fit such a system to a muck spreader.
Manually greasing a machine does have its disadvantages, which no doubt you’ll be very familiar with: it takes time, and, no matter how careful you are, you end with some grease on you. And then there is the factor of whether you pumped in enough or too much. Manual greasing does have its advocates, though, who’ll take assurance that every single grease point has been fed, and, if a line breaks on a auto lube system, it will run dry. For those users with experience of an auto lubrication system, they see the plus points of reduced daily maintenance and extended service life from bushes and pivots. To run through what is involved in fitting such a system, we tagged along with an engineer from Groeneveld-Beka to watch him rig up a Tebbe muck spreader.
Electric pump
The EP-1 pump is an electrically driven unit. Lubrication is on a timer, with the intervals set on the terminal of the spreader or on two small dials on the pump itself. There are a variety of reservoirs available that go with the pump, with capacities ranging from 1.2kg to 8.0kg. Inside the reservoir is an agitator blade that stirs out any air pockets and feeds the grease through a perforated grid to the pump element.
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