Research on an on-line ferrograph

This paper introduces the basis principle and test results of a newly developed on-line ferrograph OLF-1. The instrument catches wear debris with an electromagnet, detects wear debris with a photoelectric sensor, and controls sampling and data processing with a single-chip microprocessor which can communicate with a master computer. The test results show that wear debris greater than 5 μm in size is detected most efficiently and the correspondence of test results between OLF-1 and an analytical ferrograph is evident.