[M.D. Holloway]

The mines in the states mostly strip land, the mines in Canada bore down deep to get the ore. They transport it up with lifts attached to cables. Think service elevator on roids.

Mines use heavy equipment that abuses the heck out of engine, transmission and hydraulic oil. They also require a bunch of grease for the pins, bushings and bearings.

The mine I was in crushes the rock (they call it muck - which is boulders and wet dirt) into manageabe stones that are trucked to the smelting plant then to the refinery. These crushers are the nastiest things imaginable. The thing has a huge fly wheel and a counter balence weight. The shaft is concentric (think cam shaft and main bearing in you engine) and pushes a plate of steel about 8 inches thick into another plate that is stationary. The first plate is on an angle so the muck falls down and gradually more and more pressure is apllied till the rock is crushed. The force and sound is amazing - even with ear protection. Needless to say, the bearings (two large pillow block bearings, about 4 feet each in dia, and two bearings on the cam about 3.5 feet in dia each) experience incredable stress, contamination and even heat due to the pressures. The fly wheels alone must wiegh 150,000 lbs. The grease that they have been using is a special mine grease from Esso. Their bearings have come dangeruosly close to failing to to increased heating up due in part to ***** grase from Esso. Repalceing the bearings would cost literally millions in lost revenue. They have been just getting by. This is a common problem in the mines by the way as it is in many heavy equipment applications.

I had invented a product the performas like a grease but will actually remove the built up varnish from the bearing surface and also losen any hardened grease. So you purge the bearings during operation with this stuff (called BEARING PURGE) and all this ***** starts pouring out then follow up with our wiz bang grease and watch temeratures drop, amperes drop and eventually bearing replacements drop.

This actually happened today. The operation temperatures of the bearinsg we were studying started to decrease while the bearinsg we were not doing the BEARING PURGE on strated to increase (which was normal). The final thing was the amp reduction. Thats real, tanagable $$$ savings that is directly related to the bottom line.

BTW - I've been pick'n black boogers from my nose all night! Can anyone say black lung?