Vaseline vs Lubrinox: how a special coating prevented galling of stainless steel bolts
One of our customers was instructed by their client to use vaseline as a lubricant on stainless steel (SS) bolts, to prevent galling in bolted connections. Unfortunately, vaseline turned out not to be a miracle solution: the bolts continued to seize far too often. The customer therefore started looking for an alternative.
Testing Lubrinox in practice
After consulting with Fabory, the customer decided to take the plunge and proposed using Lubrinox fasteners to their client. The client was open to the challenge, provided that Lubrinox truly performed better than vaseline in practice. To verify this, tests were carried out on Fabory’s friction test bench.
We examined how consistent the friction was when using Lubrinox compared to vaseline. In total, nine tests were conducted, each time with a fresh stainless steel bolt, nut, and washer. A thin layer of lubricant was applied manually to the threads, just as the customer had previously done with vaseline, to simulate realistic assembly conditions.
And how consistent is Lubrinox really?
This is where it gets a little technical. The results spoke for themselves: the bolts with vaseline showed a high and variable friction coefficient of around 0.26 (±0.05). Dominic Franse, Manager Engineering: “With such high friction, galling is going to occur frequently.” In contrast, the Lubrinox bolts demonstrated a much lower and more stable coefficient of around 0.12 (±0.04). “Thanks to this low and consistent friction, galling was effectively prevented.”
We also observed that friction in the thread varied more than under the bolt head. This was likely caused by the manual application of the lubricant, which is not always evenly distributed and can shift during assembly.
Conclusion
All’s well that ends well. With these test results, our customer was able to convince their client to fully switch to Lubrinox. This brought a major advantage: no more manual application of vaseline to bolts, and galling was eliminated once and for all. In short, Lubrinox proved to be the ideal solution to this persistent problem.
Curious how Lubrinox can improve your processes? Discover the advantages here.
