timhall99

yes, defense is definitely on our radar and we are looking for partners to assist us in getting into these places.

Hi Leif, Haha i know what you mean in terms of the most hellish places on earth. Last month, we went 300m into an underground mine and that is not a place you want to be spending too much time.. haha

Very interesting use case and yes, the GreaseBoss system would be perfect to talk into your PLC through API's to verify that zerks had been greased.

Thanks also for the feedback on the business model (i like the comment "Haas is a machine builder, not a business model"). I agree that CAPEX expenditure for some companies is by far the easiest way to procure others are seeking OPEX as a way to manage cashflow. I think we need solid offerings for both models.

What is the name of your company? It would be great to chat further.

That is so true about a plant needing its own nervous system.

It would be great to speak to you further on this to get your thoughts on what implementation style would work best.

my email is tim@greaseboss.com.au if you're open for a chat

Thanks Steve, We really appreciate your support

Yes, these auto lubricators are widespread and a competitor to our current product. That being said, these auto lubricator do have their downsides and our customers have been very open about these. One of our customers is using GreaseBoss to replace auto lubricators as it gives much better control over the greasing. Additionally, we do have a second product in development that works with auto lubricators to overcome some of the core issues that our customers are experiencing with them.

Thanks Sigma, Yeah, this is not the first time that we've heard this.. Its another one thats on our product roadmap at the moment...

pumps to flow god's nectar through the pipes.. also conveyors and screw pumps to carry raw ingredients (barley, hops etc) from storage locations into the vat.

Thanks Nathanael, Yes, tech adoption is a risk and something that we are trying very hard to address. Our strategy is to keep the tool & system as simple as possible. Our head unit has no buttons, only a screen and a charge port and is retrofitted onto existing grease guns. We want to allow operators to work as they normally would but to have the tool that augments them and makes their job easier. We know its not going to be an easy task, but simplicity in design is our strategy to overcome this.

Yes, we are aware that big manufacturers are starting to roll out lots of telemetry into their equipment. i've only seen the greasing angle addressed by manufacturers on mobile equipment (bulldozers etc) The problem with these platforms is that they are designed to encourage lock in. Lets face it, most customers don't buy one type of equipment for their entire plant. With many different brand specific platforms, it may not be palatable for customers. Our strategy is to be light, retrofittable, simple and easily integrated into customer's larger management systems (like SAP)

Ah right.. I see your angle. Yes, it is something that we have looked into. This is our first product into the space and we anticipate many iterations and many more to come ;)

Awesome Tyler! I'll keep note of your freelance page for reference later.

Cheers

I understand your concerns. We are running trials with numerous companies (large and small) right now so that we can develop case studies to understand and communicate the ROI of the system.

The pricing of GreaseBoss is positioned to be less than the cost of having a full-time hire looking after the greasing alone (based on Western country pay scales).

Yes, precisely. In many industries, like mining, when a piece of equipment fails a root cause analysis is performed to identify the reason for failure. Incorrect greasing is a huge contributor to this. One of the world's largest bearing suppliers (SKF) note that over 36% of bearing failures is due to incorrect greasing "wrong lubricant, wrong quantity, wrong lubrication interval" (source link is below)

Tracking the completion of lubrication is the only way to verify that the equipment is actually being correctly maintained.

https://www.skf.com/binaries/pub12/Images/0901d1968064c148-B...

Thanks for the feedback. In answer to your comments: Each tag that is fit under the zerk is small and cheap, installed just like a washer. They cost about $2.50 USD and once fitted, should last a long time. The expensive equipment is located in the head unit, which attaches to a grease gun. So, most sites will only need a handful of these.

On the software side, the system uses the customer's existing maintenance schedule. The problem that it is solving there is that paper based work orders don't track tasks down to a per zerk basis. At a huge refinery we visited, the lube tech had one work order that they would do all week and close off on a Friday afternoon. There is no way that systems like these can verify that each machine has been correctly greased. In your situation, performing bi-weekly grease runs, the system would be setup to schedule all of your greasing on the nominated days of the grease run and would indicate the required grease volume for each zerk as you went through the rounds to make sure the correct volume is applied. If at the end of the day, you missed one zerk (lets face it, we are all humans here) the system would let you know that it was missed so you could ensure it gets greased.

We don't want to be a third party between a customer and their machines. simply a tool that supports the customer to verify that their machines are being correctly maintained.

Hi Jeff, Also on your comment, what we've seen on a number of sites is that they do have a good maintenance team but sometimes jobs just get missed. If there is a series of equipment failures that draw the team's attention towards urgent repair work, of course the greasing is not going to get done. Those sites see the benefit of then having the system there to flag the greasing that was missed so that they can be completed once the urgent repairs have been completed - or at least ensure the critical equipment is greased.

Thanks Tyler. Your line of work seems interesting. We are probably not there just yet but in 6 months or so, it would be interesting to see how we could extract more value out of the data we're receiving. What is the name of your company?

Thanks! Yes, i've been speaking to some guys in the oil and gas sector and one of them told me that greasing valves in that environment is a process safety concern as the grease assists the valve to seal and prevent gas leaks. We will definitely play the safety angle with these types of industries. Thanks for the feedback

Haha yes, the industrial cloud is definitely a thing..

We faced challenges with getting such a system to be "industry ready" on the shoestring budget that we started with and hence our very first prototype that went into industry trials failed early. Our later version has taken on board all of the learnings from these first failures as well as a bit more budget. The system uses engineering plastics (like acetal and polycarbonate) as well as high quality, off the shelf industrial products. That being said we have another 2 or so product iterations planned to continue to ruggedise the system further. Our customers on these sites can be very rough on the tools.

Hi Sean, Yes, we have a Milwaukee grease gun with the measured output. What our system has shown is that their "measurement" is not perfectly accurate all the time.

The biggest factor is the human performing the greasing remembering how much grease is required for each individual zerk and how often they require greasing. Reading the user manuals of some of this equipment shows that one machine might have 10 zerks that require 3 different volumes at 5 different greasing intervals. How can a maintenance operator be expected to remember all of that information for all equipment across the plant? Managing this data is the core value that GreaseBoss delivers to the maintenance operators.

Hi Cash, Yes, our system ensures that the correct grease is used and that the correct amount is applied at the right time.

I heard a story from a nearby power plant the other day of the incorrect grease being applied to a bearing. The two mismatched greases reacted poorly and turned to a wax inside the bearing. Needless to say, the bearing failed catastrophically very soon after. Our system not only tracks the grease type digitally, but we also have colour coding on our tags and head units to help humans easily match colours to ensure they have the right grease in the gun too.

Cheers

Hi Alan, We've been working with people from both end of the spectrum (on the tools and in the office). I completely agree that the system may not have any appeal for the guys on the tools who don't give a shit. There are definitely plenty of them out there. What we have found that there are also plenty of guys on the tools that do care and do want to do a better job. They like the tool and want to do a better job.

PS> we are already working on the next iteration of the product tag to make them more hardcore.

Cheers

Thanks. Yeah it can be a real eye opener when you step onto a large industrial site and once you get a look under the covers, see that the systems and processes around something so simple are in complete shambles. It appears that everyone is just too busy to take the time to fix them.. Our tech stack is being upgraded right as we speak.. The new system utilises micropython on the head units, AWS and Laravel. We currently have one great software developer (I'm sure he could answer your tech stack question a lot better haha) and yes, we are looking to build out our software team into the future.

Thanks for your support.