Falk Long Term Grease (LTG) for Flexible Shaft Couplings.

Our engineers have spent years measuring the wear rates on coupling components using various lubricants and coatings. Virtually every common industrial lubricant has been centrifuged under laboratory conditions per American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) standard test methods for “Oil Separation from Lubricating Grease by Centrifuging.” The results of extensive research indicated that greases with high viscosities and low bleed rates produce the longest life. Falk® LTG is specially formulated to provide superior lubrication for flexible shaft couplings.


Features and Benefits

Separation — grease is a blend of oil and a thickener or soap. These compounds are not very stable and will eventually bleed or separate under the high centrifugal forces generated in many coupling applications. Once a grease begins to separate, the thickener accumulates in the areas where lubrication is required, and rapid wear of the contacting surfaces occurs. The oil is now free to leak out of the coupling past the seals, causing premature failure of the coupling. 

Service intervals for all-purpose greases — it is common practice to lubricate all rotating equipment with one or two all-purpose greases.

Most greases that are used as coupling lubricants were initially developed as bearing lubricants. 

Bearing greases have a low viscosity and high bleed rate which is desirable to avoid heat caused by rolling friction. However, rolling friction is not present in couplings where the only movement is a sliding action caused by misalignment of shafts or thermal growth.

Maintenance and downtime — in today’s industrial plants the cost of equipment downtime for servicing can easily exceed thousands of dollars per hour. So rather than shutting down this critical equipment, the connecting shaft couplings are frequently allowed to run until failure occurs or until the more expensive drive components in the system require maintenance. 

In an attempt to hold the line of high maintenance costs, some users have switched to non lubricated coupling designs. This switch seldom works out for the best because many elastomer designs have a short life expectancy and they induce problems elsewhere in the drive system. When they do fail, the connected equipment often has to be moved to replace the element.