chain lubrication

dear experts,

right now I'm stuck with a problem ... in our company we have roller chain of 779 rollers and it is turning aroun wheel of 20 teeth .
My goal is to find out solution how to lubricate each one roller during lubrication cycle only once (but each one) .
Lubrication equipment is on the rotating tooth wheel, and consists of 3 jets .
I have sensor for 1 turn round of the wheel , which gives starting impuls for jets .
So at 1st cycle I should lubricate rollers 1,2,3 at 2nd cycle 21,22,23, 3rd cycle 41,42,43 ... aand so on . But technicians says that jets need some time for recovery after spraying and so I can not lubricate after every turn of the wheel but maybe 3 or 4 (so the sequence should be 1,2,3 ... 61,62,63 ... 121,122,123 ...

Can you please help with some ideas, from where to start ... I'm using Siemens hardware, and thinking about realisation with S7-200 ot S7-300

sorry for the long post

Since 779 is not evenly divisible by 3 you won't be able to lubricate every link only once firing 3 jets each time. The factors of 779 are 19 and 41. Good luck.

how often is the lube cycle

oh sorry and how fast is the sprocket turning and how much time does the lube jet take to recharge and do they fire independ or all at once. I think theres gonna be alot of ands in this logic but it can be done

thanks for answers (or questions) and a little more light ...
the lube cycle is not constant ... speed of factory line is changing according to produced ware ... and I think this time is not the matter of this ... my idea is let user (not exactly user, but some responsible technician) set the number of sprocket turns after which the lube jets are firing, I just want to check by sw if all rollers will be lubricated
so I'd like to know if there's some 'magic formula' for this ... like having 779 bits and checking if they are all on providing they are allways activated like triplet by factors of 20 and should be activated only once during cycle ...

as of my calculations number 779 is ok, because of continuous cycle, so the end of one cycle, when some of rollers are lubed for second time is like beginning of the other cycle ... so maybe better it would be to say that I want every roller should be lubed by the same amount of oil

all 3 jets are firing at the same time
the speed of chain should vary 100-250m/min , sprocket diameter is 0.97m

What is this setup doing and what is its operating environment temperature water sand (or ??) falling on chain etc etc?

From my experience with chain drives
1. Definitely you need to keep it lubed
2. Chain and wire rope lube may suffice
3. The drive sprockets will pick up excess lube and after two or three complete passes of chain will pass excess on sprocket to the "dry links".
4. I do not think it is necessary to try to apply lube to each and every link
5. The best I have found is a paint brush and spray can to apply - the brush catches excess and spreads lube over adjacent links. Bit messy but I found that worked well with rusty or "ignoered for a while" chain.

Dan Bentler

you have a sprocket that is almost 1 meter in diameter.
and a chain that is running in excess of 100 meters per minute
what is the roller diameter and the pitch 150mm aprox?
with that gap, are the 3 sprays concentrated on one roller at a time?
is it possible to use additional sprays at agreater pitch to allow for recovery

With 779 rollers and 20 teeth, the rollers will shift 1 pitch every 39 revs of the wheel. After 39*20 revs of the wheel, each roller will have been sprayed 3 times if you can spray every rev.

If you have to reduce the spray rate then it will take more revs to evenly spray the rollers.

Your requirement of 3 lube jets firing together, and only do each link once, requires one more link added to the chain to make 780 links.
Which is divisible by 3, and lubing needs then to take place at 3 link spacing.

Like fire at 1,4,7,10,13,16,19,21, take your choice of the numer to fire each step at and track those lubed.


Reading this again my assumption was that you are spraying 3 links at once, or are all 3 jets aimed at one link at a time.

to clear the setup , I've attached some simple image ... (so no image, right now I'm at place with very poor connection ...)

rollers are clean from outer side (and must stay so), I'm spraying inside them
hardware setup is something I must accept ... it simply is ...

I'm just wondering to find solution to be sure, that every link (or roller) is lubed with the same amount of oil, if one should be more, there is risk of messing the outside of it, and if some is not lubed, there is risk of damage at that speed ...

btw. thanks for all your tips ... to be true, I was hoping L D[AR2,P#0.0] will join this thread , your solutions are always bright and seems so simple when they come out

if you go to one of his posts youcan send him a personal mesage

with the physical size - you could move your sensor to detect a roller at a pitched measurement 1.5 mtrs or something back from the spray then spray everv number of pulses

I think you may be making this harder than you need to.

First off, LD's solution seems on the money to me.

Second, chain lubrication isn't a moon shot. A little over lubrication on a couple of links won't hurt a thing, and a tiny bit of wasted lubricant is cheaper than chain repair.

Third, there are companies like Lincoln that make automated systems - go to one of them, or even better the supplier of your own system, for guidance: http://www.lincolnindustrial.com/asp/products/other_auto_lube.asp

Fourth, don't take the technician's word for how the system operates. I have no doubt what he is telling you is based on observation, but you need to get out and look at the system and figure out WHY what he sees is what occurs. Nothing beats eyeballs on the problem for stimulating solutions.

so finally on good connection ... and here is my simple image

thank you all for your effort to push me to the right way ... but I'd better get back to the goal, is there some mathematical method (which I should implement to PLC sw) how to verify that every link is lubed with the same amount of oil
I just want to be sure, because the truth is, that even one drop that gets out of the roller may cause damage to the product carried by the chain ...

I know that counting links directly (not by factors of 20) could ease this problem, but it might cause another problems so I was asked if it is possible to avoid this solution

If you sprayed on the first pulse you would get rollers 1,2,&3. If you then counted and sprayed again on the 118th pulse you would spray rollers 4,5,&6. Another 117 pulses would get rollers 7,8,&9.

At 100 m/s with a 0.97m sprocket you're getting approximately 33 rpm which means you have a little more than 3.5 minutes between sprays which would mean just over 15 hours to spray every roller once and only once.

At 250 m/s you're getting approximately 82 rpm which would mean about 1.4 minutes between sprays and just over 6 hours to get every roller.

You'll have to determine if that amount of lubrication will be sufficient for your application.

Another direction for thought. Can the chain be lubricated by something which will not drip and not cause damage if it accidently touches the product?