Solutions for Lubricant Research

CETR offers a wide range of solutions to meet your lubricant testing, research and analysis needs.  

If you wish to perform your own tests, CETR manufactures and sells the world�s most advanced tribometers, backed by a full warranty, outstanding customer service, on-site installation and in-depth training.  

If you would like testing performed for you, CETR lab performs a wide range of tests to meet your testing needs.  Strict confidentiality of your data is always guaranteed.

Our single-platform, multiple-configurations fully-computerized UMT testers of the unique acclaimed modular design can perform practically all common tribological tests of lubricants, which has made them the most widely used tribometers in the world. Its numerous tests of fuels, oils, greases and solid lubricants are partly described in the following documents:

Paper at World Tribology Congress 2005 (PDF)

Lubricating Properties of Oils | PDF, 96 kb

Long-term stability studies |  PDF file, 114 Kb

Reibwertuntersuchungen an Motoren�len im Mikrotribometer (PDF)

Some of the typical tests routinely run on the UMT-series tribometers:

• Pin/ball-on-disc with an either reciprocating (spiral wear track) or rotating (crater-like wear track) or stationary (circular wear track) upper pin or ball (from 1 to 25 mm) on an either rotating or stationary disc (up to 150 mm),
• Disc/ring-on-ring/disc with both or one of the disc/ring rotating,
• Pin/ball-on-plate with an either reciprocating or rotating or stationary upper pin/ball (from 1 to 25 mm) on an either linearly-reciprocating or stationary plate (up to 150 mm),
• Flat-on-flat with self-aligning specimen holders and at least one of them linearly-reciprocating; when both of them are linearly reciprocating in perpendicular axes, a controlled ratio of their frequencies allows for either circular (ratio of 1) or butterfly-wings (ratio of 2) or other programmable wear track patterns,
• Block-on-ring/wheel with a rotating ring/wheel/bearing/seal (including standard Timken and Falex rings) and either stationary or sliding block or plate:
• Cylinder-on-cylinder, with either one or both of them rotating and one of them sliding on the other at the programmable angle from 0 (parallel axes) to 90 degree (perpendicular axes),
• Screw-in-nut or drill-in-hole, with either screw/drill or nut/hole rotating and either the same or other specimen moving in and out of the thread/hole.

In all these and numerous other tests, the UMT can perform an automated synchronized control of several specimen motions with linear speeds from 0.1 micron/s to 30 m/s (7 orders of magnitude!) and angular speeds ranging from 0.001 to 7,000 rpm, under the precision loads from 1 �N to 1 kN (9 orders of magnitude!).  In these unprecedented wide ranges, the UMT can automatically monitor a number of process parameters in-situ with a high sampling rate:

• Normal load (servo-controlled, constant or changing, e.g., sinusoidal),
• Friction force, torque and coefficient (static and dynamic),
• Wear depth and rate,
• Contact high-frequency acoustic emission,
• Electrical contact resistance,
• Temperature and humidity.

The above tests can be performed in optional controlled environmental conditions, including temperature from -25C to 1,000 �C, humidity from 5 to 95 %RH, various gases, vacuum (to 10E-6 torr).

The test specimens can be either fully immersed in or have just a few droplets of the tested lubricant. The lubricant can be either continuously or periodically supplied with a computer-controlled pump, and then either re-circulated back to the pump or drained via corrosion-resistant waste-collecting pans. Alternatively, the lubricant can be put in the oil container once before the test and not regenerated until the test end. 

For more tribometer description and information please click the link below:

UMT Main | PDF file

For some of the archival-quality test results obtained by scientists all over the world on the UMT testers for lubrication testing and research, please click the link below:

Published Papers

Video - Center for Tribology "The Micro-Tribometer" - Length: 7:50
To watch a video presentation of CETR tribometer, made by Dr. Norm Gitis, CETR president, and renowned tribologist, select the type of connection you have and click on it: RealPlayer: Windows Media Player: 350kbps   80kbps   33kbps 350kbps   100kbps   32kbps