The reasons for the foaming of the gearbox can be analyzed from the following two aspects:
(1) Equipment
1. The amount of oil in the oil tank is small, so the part exposed to the air is large, which makes it easy to introduce air to produce foam during the stirring process.
2. There are problems in the design of the lubrication pipeline, such as many bends in the return pipeline, small pipelines, high distance from the return pipeline to the oil surface, and fast return speed, resulting in short defoaming time of the oil.
(2) Oil products
1. All gear oils contain anti-foaming agents with a concentration of 5-10μg/g. Poor dispersion of anti-foaming agents, poor storage stability, and water ingress in the oil tank will all cause industrial gear oil foam.
2. The oil has a long service life, which causes the anti-foaming agent in the oil to be consumed or filtered out by multi-stage filter materials.
3. Oil products are contaminated by external impurities, and these impurities have complex chemical reactions with additives in the oil products, causing the additives to be consumed.
3. Additives such as anti-wear agents and extreme pressure agents added to gear oils are all polar substances, and their surface tension is relatively large, which will stabilize the bubbles and make the oil difficult to defoam.
The solutions after gearbox foaming include:
1. Add gear oil of the same type and brand to appropriately increase the oil level of the gear oil tank to reduce air entry.
2. Strengthen the removal of water and pollution impurities in the gear oil, replace the gear box filter element in time, or use an oil filter trolley to filter the oil in a cycle.
