Dow Corning’s Gene Finner will explain how different types of bearings used in circuit breakers, and the different environments that breakers operate in, may require specialty synthetic lubricants to achieve peak performance and bearing life. Finner, who is an applied-engineering technical service professional for Molykote lubricants, said that “general-purpose lubricants are probably not going to provide high levels of performance.”

Finner will present Effective Circuit Breaker Mechanism Lubrication on Wednesday, Oct. 8, at the Finepoint Circuit Breaker Test and Maintenance Training Conference.

Finner has held his current position at Dow Corning for 11 years. Dow Corning is a global company headquartered in Midland, Michigan, with about 9000 employees and roughly 25,000 products, and is a global leader in silicon technology.

Finner will present some key thoughts to help professionals think analytically about how equipment, lubricants and environment all affect equipment performance and each other. He will show some examples of how and why bearings fail. These examples are geared to show that in addition to lubrication, maintenance practices can affect bearing life too.

“With the continuing trend of experienced maintenance staff retirement and reduction in maintenance budgets, the resources able to be devoted to effective breaker maintenance are limiting factors that can be positively affected by good lubrication practices among other things,” Finner said.

Finner will answer questions following the presentation. Visit Dow Corning at Booth #74 at the Hospitality Expo.