For example, a manufacturer of stainless steel exhaust systems contacted us because the lubricant they had used for some years struggled to lubricate thin walled tubes bent to a customers’ specifications.  The film broke down, they experienced judder, stick slip, tearing and scratching.  Plus their alkali wash cleaning system struggled to remove all the oil from components.   We’ve supplied alkali washable stainless steel cold drawing oils to the US market for ~20 years, so we know the technology.  But they wanted a phosphorus free product.  Luckily, we never stop developing products – always on the look out for new solutions to problems and we’d recently identified a new surfactant that worked well solubilising chlorinated paraffins / waxes on tubes.  So we quickly developed a new oil meeting their viscosity requirements and shipped a sample for testing.  It wasn’t long before they placed an order for Gruebb 5029.

Another example in the field of tube bending was an approach by an equipment builder.  They wanted to move away from traditional oily type products completely. So we formulated an innovative water-based gel called Aquagel.  They’ve been using Aquagel for over two years.  We also supply Aquagel to other companies within Europe who rebrand it.