Friction, by definition, lives to stop machinery in its tracks. It’s caused by the forces that limit movement between two surfaces. For example, it works to keep your machinery stationary on your floors.

While that aspect of friction can be quite helpful, it’s other attributes hinder the efficiency of your machine. 

Friction between the parts of a machine, however, can be combated by effective lubrication. Specifically, metal lubricant fights to keep friction and heat within a mechanical structure to a minimum. This keeps the machinery at both peak safety and maximum efficiency. 

With that being said, haphazardly adding metal lubricant to your machinery is not the solution. Keep reading for a few tips on how to apply lubricants to metal. 

Using the Correct Lubricant

Lubricants exist to make up for the erosion that friction causes. Because of this, it lengthens the lifespan of frequently used machinery. 

For each type of machinery, there are types of lubricants that are preferred for that particular system. Oils and greases are both effective but have different advantages when it comes to metal lubricant use.

Choosing the correct lubrication, therefore, is done based on the machine’s burden and speed required for the task. For example, according to MachineDesign, light loads require machine oil, whereas heavy loads require a grease with an additive for extreme pressure.

Metal Lubricant Starvation: A Silent Killer

Lubricant starvation is one of the most significant contributions to mechanical wear and tear. It is a prominent issue because it is one that is hidden in the depths of the internal machinery.

Machines require a sufficient amount of the correct lubrication. The absence of adequate lubrication leads to corrosion, which occurs because of excess heat and exposure to metal pollutants like oxidizers. These adverse contaminants can be detrimental to a machine’s integrity.

Lubricant starvation is not easily recognizable or detected. That is why it is described as a silent killer. There are a few signs of lubrication starvation, but those require a deep understanding of the machinery itself. 

However, this can be avoided altogether by the consistent application of metal lubrication.

Avoid Overgreasing

While it is crucial to lubricate the machinery generously, overgreasing the system can be just as harmful as undergreasing. Most of the symptoms of the two are identical. 

On top of that, overgreasing wastes lubricant, which adds an unnecessary expense to your machinery upkeep.

Most overgreasing mistakes occur because of automatic greasing systems. This is not to say that these systems are bad; they just are sometimes overlooked. 

Automatic greasing systems need to be correctly calibrated before they are put to use. Most of these systems are calibrated to supply a certain amount of lubrication for a certain time. One thing that would ensure proper calibration is to fraction this number and apply it more frequently.  

Finding the Best Metal Lubricant

Correctly applying metal lubricants can seem like a daunting task. However, it is all about knowing all that you can about your machinery to decide on the best lubricant. 

Whether you are taking preventative or adjustment measures, Kor-Pak is here for you. If you have any questions, contact us for advice on how to ensure the longevity of your machinery.

You think that you’ve been doing everything in your power to keep your equipment well preserved for it to last long, however, no matter what you do, you can’t seem to escape rust. 

Escaping rust would be easy if we knew what the causes of rusting are. In this article, we break the cause down and also advise on the preventative measures that can be taken to ensure that all owned equipment lasts longer.

Rust and the Causes of Rusting

The causes of rusting no longer have to be a mystery. Rust is the brownish-reddish patches you see on any of your materials made from metal that contains iron. Iron oxidizes from being exposed to air and water, which is when the patches form.

Rust can be detrimental to the longevity of your equipment because it is corrosive, and over time, your equipment will no longer be of use, leaving you to invest in new machinery. 

How To Keep Equipment From Rusting

To see rust form on your equipment can be frustrating and can cause huge holes in your pocket if you don’t get ahead of it. Here are some tips and tricks to keep the rust off your materials. 

Clean and Dry

Keeping your equipment clean and dry is a great way to start attacking rust from forming. Any kind of debris clinging to the equipment can bring moisture, which is where the oxidization process can begin to form, so making sure to regularly clean equipment and dry it off.

If you live in a humid area, expect to see more rust form on your equipment. Humidity allows moisture to form, which is all rust needs to grow.  If your equipment is stored in a humid area, it essential to make wiping equipment down a routine. 

Purchase a Dehumidifier

In case you do store your equipment in a humid area, purchase a dehumidifier, which will lessen the amount of moisture your equipment gets exposed to. Continue to dry off your equipment as the extra mile in combating rust. 

Prevent and Treat Scratches

Scratches in equipment provide an area where water and moisture can cling to. Making efforts to be more careful with equipment is the first step. If you notice equipment is scratched up, try to repair them, so you don’t lose the equipment to rust. 

Apply Rust Protective Coating

There are many protective coating sprays or wipes out in the market that can be used on equipment to prevent rusting. Investing in these added protective measures will help in the long run to protect corrosion occurring on equipment. 

Regular Maintenance

Like an infection, rust spreads. When rust forms and isn’t treated, it can spread to other parts of the machinery leaving the equipment useless. The moment rust is noticed, all efforts should be made to remove it.

You can scrape it off and then apply warm water and soap to the affected area. After that, use the rust protective coating on it to prevent it from coming back. In the case that there is rust in places you can’t get to, it’s best to call in a professional who can repair it for you. 

If you feel that a part is too rusted to save, it’s best just to cut your losses and then invest in a new one. 

Start Prevention Now That You Know

So now that we know the causes of rusting, we can follow the tips above to prevent rust forming and sacrificing our machinery. Taking the time to incorporate these steps to your routine will show results of little to no rust and will increase equipment life. Rust can be destructive to machinery if not treated immediately.

Contact us for more information on how to combat rust formation!

When working in the mining industry, it’s only right that workers are equipped with the tools needed to do their jobs properly. In this article, we will discuss the necessary mining equipment to ensure the efficient performance of daily mining tasks.

Without the proper tools, time and efficiency will be sacrificed, decreasing the production of work. There are specific tools that are needed to mine the precious rocks lodged underground or under the sea.

Mining Equipment: Earth Shakers

A tool called the earthmover is needed to ensure that waste and other debris don’t build-up on the construction site. The heavy machinery is a staple in the mining industry and works in correlation with a bulldozer to move soil from one place to another in large masses.

After the debris has been removed from the work site, it allows miners to extract minerals without having added issues. Once the earth-shaker has completed it’s part of the job, other machinery can move onto the site and get to work on performing their jobs.

Mining Drill Equipment

Having access to a drilling device is essential when working underground to extract precious materials. When minerals and other rocks are trapped deep below the ground, drills need to be utilized to bring them to the surface.

The specific job carried out by the drills is to shake loose the material that is encasing the minerals and make it easier to remove the mineral from the surrounding rock. The drills use a series of charges that create the effect that loosens the area.

Another reason why a drill is a useful tool is that it is used to create a hole for miners to travel underground to mine. If the gap is not big enough for workers to pass through, it can prove problematic as work gets underway. Workers won’t be able to pass from the surface into the ground, and excavating mined minerals will be challenging to bring to the surface.

Crushing Machinery

Crushing equipment is used to break down rocks and make it easier to move from one place to another. If the rock and gravel aren’t broken down, it could cause a build-up of waste because it would be challenging to move large pieces of material.

Depending on the operation, there are different ways that the waste is brought to the crushing equipment. If the work is being done underground, a conveyer belt will deliver the material that needs to be crushed to the crusher.

Various haul trucks will pick up and transport the material to the crusher if the work is being done above ground.

Crushing equipment helps reduce the amount of equipment that is needed on-site, which can help a company cut unnecessary costs by having only a few pieces of machinery on-site during the project.

Weight feeders

A weight feeder is a piece of equipment that is used to deliver materials to other machines to be disposed of. The weight feeder ensures that the mining site is kept free of materials that could make getting the job done more challenging to complete.

Without the use of weight feeders and other conveying equipment, there is no control over what flows in and out of the mining area.

Ensure that the belt is kept lubricated so that it continues working well. If the belt isn’t lubricated, it can cause a backlog of traffic holding up the mining job.

Do You Have Your Tools?

When a list of equipment is being made that is needed on-site, the equipment listed above must be present during work hours. It will make the production of work run smoother than if the equipment wasn’t on site.

Check out the products offered on our site if you’re looking for reliable and durable equipment. If you’ve got any questions about products on our site, contact us at any time.

A warehouse with heavy equipment and machinery can be a dangerous place to work; that’s why many often display the number of days that have passed since the last accident. In America, forklifts alone injure around 34,900 people each year. 

Working in a warehouse can be dangerous, but it doesn’t have to be. Following some essential safety tips can drastically reduce the number of injuries and fatalities in the workplace. Government agencies enforce many safety tips, and following them will keep the company in compliance with the law. 

To learn some essential forklift safety tips, carefully read the guide below. 

1. Provide/Attend Safety Training Sessions

According to OSHA standards, all employees who operate a forklift must be trained appropriately. The company training program must cover specific content, like safety rules, working with the models of forklift available, examples of hazards, and OSHA guidelines. 

Forklift training should ideally be a hands-on educational experience. Videos and lectures are supplemental, but the best learning will come from employees working with the equipment themselves. Don’t forget to demonstrate essential procedures like how to conduct daily inspections or maintain load stability. 

Make sure that all employees update their training every few years. Even the most experienced forklift operator is susceptible to mistakes. 

2. Regularly Check and Inspect

While an in-depth inspection of mechanical parts and electrical performance occur monthly or quarterly, there should still be daily inspections of essential functions. Before any employee operates a forklift, they should check it for hazards. 

Employees can check the water, oil, radiator, tires, fork, brakes, lights, horn, and steering wheel for issues. Ensure fluid levels are appropriate, and there are no malfunctions or deformities. Evaluate the surrounding area for potential danger, like uneven ground or obstructions. 

3. Awareness and Accident Prevention

Maintaining awareness while operating a forklift is one of the best ways to prevent accidents. Knowing the most common causes for injuries — load problems, pedestrians, and inadequate space — helps prevent them.

Some necessary awareness includes exercising extra caution in intersections, paying attention to workplace signs and floor markings, and checking that a load doesn’t block eyesight. 

4. Monitoring Capacity and Stability

Load instability is a significant cause of forklift injury and fatality. Never overload a forklift, and stay within the stability triangle. Loads should be placed as close to the wheels as possible to avoid tip-over. 

Keeping the forks low to the ground also helps with stability. Make sure to drive slowly and take care around corners to maintain balance. 

5. Floor Marking Different Areas

Floor marking in a warehouse is as important as road markings outside. They alert pedestrians and drivers where to go. This helps prevent accidents. 

Floor marking should indicate paths that should not be blocked, differentiate between different areas like docks and doors, and indicate parking areas. They should help control the flow of traffic and try to keep pedestrians and forklifts separate.

More Forklift Safety Tips

This is by no means an exhaustive list of all the ways to safely work with a forklift. Additional measures like establish visual communication methods and LO/TO are also a good idea. Don’t forget to share these tips with coworkers, friends, and family that work around forklifts. 

For more information on working with industrial equipment, make sure to visit our page.

Preventative maintenance of equipment reduces the risk of on the job accidents. Here’s a clean-cut way to design an effective preventative maintenance program. 

What is Preventive Maintenance (PM)?

Preventative maintenance is routine maintenance performed on equipment to ensure its efficacy. This type of support is especially crucial for any business that uses heavy machinery like iron and steel. Preventative maintenance reduces the chances of breakdowns and saves engineers stress and money. 

A reliable preventative maintenance program saves companies from unwanted downtime. And, it allows companies to maintain productivity levels.  

Effective preventative maintenance programs use maintenance planning and scheduling before parts experience issues. (PM) also accounts for data from the past, such as previous breakdowns and maintenance reports. 

Noticing the potential for these small problems increases productivity. It also saves engineers cash and labor costs. 

1. Develop a Plan

Before putting a PM plan into effect, establish who performs the tasks. Choosing who conducts your PM plan is just as important as the plan itself. Maintenance managers are an excellent choice for PM workers. 

Maintenance technicians are good workers to place underneath maintenance managers. However, it’s important to manage employee workloads.

Sometimes workers are overworked and not interested in the preventative maintenance program. In that case, you’re spending precious labor hours for nothing.

First, figure out who performs the maintenance. Then, decide what support your company needs and the program’s schedule.

An example of a PM maintenance project goal is reducing maintenance costs by 15% in the second business quarter. 

2. Inventory Facility Equipment/Assets

The most time-consuming aspect of setting up a preventive maintenance program is setting an accurate inventory. Setting an inventory is also the most critical.  

Taking an inventory allows employees to create a routine out of their preventative checks. With an inventory, employees can cross each item off a list as they finish tasks. 

3. Create Preventive Maintenance Procedures

After creating an inventory, create the specific maintenance procedures for each inventory item. Create a frequency number to accompany the task to tell workers how often they should perform maintenance checks.   

4. Create Preventive Maintenance Schedules

Creating a preventative maintenance schedule involves designating high-priority items and low-priority items. These designations communicate that certain parts are more susceptible to breakdowns than others. It also identifies the impact of a piece breaking down.

5. Training Your Maintenance Team

A preventative maintenance program is useless without proper training. Your plan could be the most brilliant, but if your employees don’t understand it, it’s futile. It’s not you who runs the preventative maintenance program; it’s your maintenance staff. 

6. Analyze – Adjust – Improve

A company’s ability to adapt defines its success. Equipment changes and maintenance methods vary with the machine. Staying on top of the best procedures for your company’s equipment keeps your preventative maintenance program consistent. 

A Preventative Maintenance Program Makes a Huge Difference

In an industry where performance is everything, it’s essential to have protection measures in place. Constructing a preventative maintenance program saves your company time and increases its production output. 

Click here to discover how else you can respond to your industrial needs!

The modern era has ushered in a wave of new technology. Much of that technology is targeted squarely at one thing: improving mass production capabilities. 

Ever since the Industrial Revolution kicked off back in the 18th century, the engineering design process has been completely overhauled. Nowadays, you must use technology to achieve the best designs possible.

Technology doesn’t make up for lack of skill. Here are some essential tips to improve your capacity as an engineer to design high-quality products.

Identify Success Criteria

Before you fire up your CAD program or start building solutions to any of your engineering problems, there’s one crucial step to know. That step is identifying success criteria. These success criteria should outline what a completed project will look like.

The success criteria should be given to you by the final recipients of the completed project.  

You need to have a very clear picture of what function you’re trying to support and what result you’re trying to create before you begin designing.

Outline Constraints

With any engineering project, you will have a set of parameters that you will have to adhere to.

These will be your constraints. Such a limitation could be a limit on the power that the unit you design draws or specific dimensions that it must be able to fit into.

What happens when you don’t know your constraints? You might design a perfectly-functioning unit that can’t be used in the real world. So, when you identify your success criteria, take the extra effort to understand the key constraints you’ll use to guide your design.

Consider Manufacturing Capabilities

During the engineering design process, one has to be aware of the limitations that exist in the manufacturing world. Each piece of industrial equipment that will be used to manufacture your engineering creations has specific restrictions on its outputs.

For instance, a specific piece of equipment may only have a tolerance to the nearest inch. Thus, a design that has to be built precisely to the nearest half-inch could not be appropriately produced using that equipment.

Before you start designing, make sure that you consider the manufacturing limitations. Check the restrictions on the industrial equipment that will be used to produce your design. As a bonus, talk to those who operate the equipment. Operators often can provide a great picture of what designs can and cannot be produced on the equipment they operate.

The Engineering Design Process, Made Simple

There you have it. With these critical tips under your belt, you should have a clearer understanding of how the engineering design process works in the corporate world.

Always remember to identify success criteria and outline constraining parameters before you design the project. Design the project within the limits of the manufacturing equipment you have to work with, and you’ll be good to go.

For more engineering advice, be sure to check out the rest of the articles available to read on our website!

A small business inventory management system can help productivity. 

If you’re trying to determine solutions to benefit your inventory management and to make your company as efficient as possible, keep reading. In this guide, we will let you in on all the fantastic things the right inventory management system can do for you. 

Elevate Efficiency and Accuracy 

Inventory inaccuracies can have severe implications for your business. These inaccuracies can result in over ordering a product or thinking you have many products that you actually don’t have at all. 

Having an accurate inventory system can assist in enhancing your order accuracy. If you currently use an employee to track your inventory numbers, you may want to omit this job role. Not only does this allow room for human error, but you’re also adding unnecessary dollars to your payroll.

Make sure that you’re using your employees for more necessary efforts with an inventory management system instead. This system will prove to be a high return on investment. You will find that it will save your time and money, as well as avoiding fallbacks due to inventory inaccuracies. 

Provides Professional Systems  

If the system you currently have in place for your inventory management is messy and inconvenient, it’s time to consider an inventory management system. Many inventory management systems provide you with helpful solutions for every step of the process. This can lead to cost and time effective solutions throughout your company.  

Many inventory management systems are complete with barcode maker and scanner technologies. This will resolve the tedious and time-consuming process of recording the ins and outs of inventory. Giving your products a barcode that will connect to your inventory tracker has many benefits. 

This will allow for a more convenient flow throughout your workday. Your employees can scan a product to adjust inventory rather than trying to find it in your system.

This adjustment may seem small but can allow your employees to move onto more valuable tasks. This switch can increase overall company productivity. 

Allows for Growth 

Does your company have multiple locations? Or are you hoping to grow your company in the future? An inventory management company can help you track your inventory across various sites. 

This will allow you to know the inventory status at both individual locations. It will also give you an overview of your companies inventory numbers as a whole.

A centralized database can help business owners and inventory managers track each branch’s progress. It can also help to make bulk reorders if both of your offices require certain products. 

Smarter Small Business Inventory Management 

If you don’t already have a small business inventory management system, you should consider one for your company today. As you can see, there are so many ways that a successful inventory management system can assist your small business.

Increase your efficiency, accuracy, and payroll dollars with an inventory management system that will allow you to grow your business with ease. 

Are you looking for a reliable supplier to get your companies reorders from? Contact us today to see how we can help!

The engineering industry is continuously evolving. New technologies are being utilized more than ever in various sectors, and it’s easy to be left behind. Here are seven top technology trends in engineering – keep reading to explore them!

1. 3D Printing

Perhaps the most notable trend in technology, 3D printing, or additive manufacturing, is really changing the engineering industry. Quick, efficient, and cost-effective, the technology is frequently utilized in engineering design and can be used for everything from isotopic printing to producing prototypes.

2. Digital Twins

Creating a virtual replica of a design before you build the real thing can be a life-saver, as it allows you to iron out any issues without wasting time and money on physical resources. As digital twins use algorithms, you can get information about how your design will operate before you make it.

3. Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a major upcoming technology trend both inside and outside engineering, and for a good reason too. Smart technology can increase efficiency and productivity in the design stage and helps to improve safety also. The use of smart devices in engineering forms part of the IoT and is vital in creating smart designs.

4. Generative Design

By using artificial intelligence (more on this below), the generative design creates solutions that humans alone would not be able to come up with. Generative design algorithms set specific parameters, and every possible combination is generated for human engineers to look at. It’s used in the production of regular everyday items as well as designs like aircraft, so you’re sure to find a place for it somewhere.

5. Artificial Intelligence

 Artificial intelligence (AI) is all around us. Collaboration between humans and AI leads to better designs and production, and AI invites changes like natural language processing, automation, and robotics. It may take some time to get used to, but AI can bring significant changes to your work.

6. Robotics

As a trend, robotics is on the rise, as robots bring so many advantages to engineering. Robots can be programmed to do more than you might expect, helping you with both physical and mental tasks. Increase safety and productivity by using robotics, as robots can now think intelligently and independently through the use of AI.

7. Sustainable Architecture

Environmental awareness has been more prominent recently, and it encompasses the engineering industry. Eco-friendly technologies like embedded sensors and intelligent electrical grids can now be used to produce more sustainable, eco-conscious designs that are also smart. 

Making the Most of Top Technology Trends

These are the top technology trends to consider for the future if you’re hoping to stay ahead in the game and keep on innovating. How are you able to utilize them for the best results?

If you’d like to find out anything else from us or get in touch, you can contact us today.