High-Performing Environmentally Acceptable Lubricants and Fluids

CASE STUDY | Mi240 HYDRAULIC

WHITE HORSE PLASTICS

The Company:

Based in Faringdon, South Oxfordshire, White Horse Plastics has over 50 years of experience in plastics injection moulding, producing high-quality precision-engineered components for the medical, automotive, consumer, and engineering sectors.

The company adopts a responsible manufacturing ethos, producing components as sustainably as possible for its customer base. To help achieve this, the company has specialised in the moulding of biopolymers, implemented onsite waste repurposing, and conducts ongoing programmes for equipment replacement.

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The Challenge:

White Horse Plastics moulding has a range of 22-tonne to 270-tonne plastic injection machines that can manufacture at a 24-hour capacity, 4-5 days a week. These machines are regularly serviced and maintained to ensure they perform as efficiently as possible; however, using mineral oil-based hydraulic fluids was becoming incompatible with the company’s sustainability goals.

White Horse Plastics needed to source a greener, alternative hydraulic fluid that would deliver excellent lubricating properties, thermal stability, and cost-effectiveness.

This prompted a trial of a new hydraulic fluid technology, which they hoped would align with their philosophy while delivering a competent level of performance in two of the company’s older, hard working machines. Both operated for long periods, with one running continuously over 24 hours, 5-day shift patterns, to produce high volumes of intricate components for an important new customer.

This alternative fluid would need to demonstrate:

   Sustainability

   High-Pressure Performance

   High-Heat Stability

The Results:

The hydraulic fluid on trial was Mi240 HYDRAULIC – a saturated synthetic ester (SSE) fluid that is readily biodegradable and classed as an EAL (Environmentally Acceptable Lubricant).

The trial began in 2022, when White Horse Plastics replaced the existing mineral oil in the two machines with Mi240. The team then regularly sampled the new hydraulic fluid as part of their oil condition monitoring programme, to ensure there were no issues with degradation or contaminants and that metallic wear was actually reduced compared with mineral hydraulic oil.

The original Mi240 HYDRAULIC is still in both machines today and has continued to work efficiently without any issues and with no evidence of wear. The team at White Horse Plastics have been delighted with the performance of the fluid, observing key benefits that align with their responsible manufacturing ethos:

The volume of hydraulic fluid required has reduced significantly.

Mi240 mitigates the disposal of hazardous oils from machines.

Mi240 is both environmentally safe and cleaner during operation.

In addition, White Horse Plastics has benefited from:

No reliability issues or unscheduled maintenance during operation.

No refilling or “top-ups” of the fluid in the hydraulic system required.

No refilling or “top-ups” of the fluid in the hydraulic system required.

Conclusion:

Mi240 HYDRAULIC has proven to be a significant success for White Horse Plastics. They have fulfilled their requirement to use a more sustainable hydraulic fluid and experienced how the fluid’s reliable performance can deliver additional operational and commercial benefits.

As a result, the company is using Mi240 HYDRAULIC in two new energy-efficient Wittmann Battenfeld machines installed recently and plans to add the hydraulic fluid to all suitable machines in the future.

Being able to supply our customers in the most efficient way possible means eliminating waste, optimising processes, and operating responsibly and sustainably. To help achieve our goals, we’ve embraced new technologies such as using bio-polymers, integrated material management processes, and invested in energy-efficient equipment. It therefore seemed logical that we should also try to find a sustainable high-performance hydraulic fluid for our machines that complemented our manufacturing ethos.

Mi240 HYDRAULIC ticks all the boxes and delivers a sustainable solution beyond its biodegradability. We’ve used the fluid in two machines for over three years, and neither has required the usual oil changes or fluid top-ups that we had to do with previous mineral oil fluids. This greatly reduced the amount of hydraulic fluid required over time and was partly the reason behind adding Mi240 to two new machines on-site.

We understand that using Mi240 offers potential energy savings as well, so combining all these positive factors means we plan to roll out Mi240 to other machines in the future.

Paul Bobby, Managing Director, White Horse Plastics

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