Metal-on-metal wear is one of the main causes of maintenance and downtime in cam-driven machines. Unless you want to deal with the expense of pitted cam surfaces or seized cam followers, you’ll have to adhere to a strict lubrication regimen.

To keep cam-driven systems running their best, you’ll need to apply lubricant to the exterior cam surfaces as well as to the interior of any rolling cam followers. It’s a lot of maintenance to keep straight, and in practice, many cam-driven machines don’t get the lubrication they really need.

However, there is an alternative to the oil-can approach. You can simply specify permanently-lubricated cam followers for your machines. We offer two different types to address the need for external and internal lubrication. Both types are based on C-Lube, an oil-impregnated polymer pad that slowly releases lubricant onto any metal surfaces it contacts.

• Externally lubricated. To handle the lubrication between the cam follower and the cam’s running surface, we’ve incorporated C-Lube into an external unit that mounts like a hood over the cam follower. It not only provides permanent lubrication to protect expensive cam surfaces from wear but also lubricates without the contamination that occurs when you apply an external lubricant.
• Internally lubricated. Some of our cam follower models also have a C-Lube component integrated into the space beneath the cam follower’s outer ring. This C-Lube integration handles the lubrication of the cam follower needle bearings and internal components, eliminating the need to apply lubricant through the cam follower’s grease nipple.

Both C-Lube technologies can last for years without significant degradation of their lubricating capabilities. In testing, for example, we’ve had C-Lube running in cam follower applications for more than 16,000 km while still retaining 95% of its lubricating oil.

You can learn more about C-Lube cam follower bearings here.