GRAPHITE.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 6 November 1914, Page 2

GRAPHITE.

A few years ago Dr. Edward G. Acheson, who is the inventor of carborundum—the world's most efficient grinding material—at Niagara Falls, N.Y., found a way of making graphite in his great electric furnaces? A mixture of coal and other substances is placed in one of the great electric furnaces, and there brought up to a temperature xft 5000 deg. Fahr., when everything in the mixture is vaporised, and disappears like steam from boiled water, excepting -the carbon in the ■mixture, and upon opening the furnace the carbon will be found as a beautiful, soft, unctuous graphite. This graphite will be almost absolutely pure, analysing- as high as 99.8 per cent, carbon.

Having produced an absolutely gritless graphite, Dr. Acheson in 1906 turned his attention to the use of this solid lubricant on an extensive scale. All former attempts in the application of natural graphite for general lubrication had encountered serious difficulties about introducing it to the wearing parts of machinery, and also there was the serious objection of the graphite being impure. Dr. Acheson surmounted these difficulties, first by making a pure graphite, and then by producing what astounded the scientific world—the deflocculation of graphite into such fine particles that it would remain diffused in a liquid like oil or water, and flow wherever the liquid would go.

This sub-divided graphite, w>hen mixed with oil, forms "oildag," which is capable of entering- not only 'the pores, . but the molecular structure of metals, and which produces i\ wonderful lubricating effect, saves friction, saves coal, saves

oil, saves power nnd saves noise too.

• "Oildag" has been thoroughly tested by practical application in many fields where heretofore plain oil has been used, and hundreds of cases are cited where the use of "oildag" has effected savings of from 25 per cent. to 70 per cent, in the oil consumption. It promises to be an ideal lubricant for general use, while for gas engines it is stated to be unsurpassed.