Our Sites

How two green lubricant-makers landed on auto OEMs’ A-lists

The steps, the sweat, the satisfaction of getting automaker approval

Before lubricants are approved by many automakers for use in forming metal components that will become part of their vehicles, they undergo a series of tests for washability, corrosion protection, adhesive compatibility, and paint and pretreatment compatibility. Image courtesy of Metalloid, Sturgis, Mich.

Getting on the coveted, exclusive list of approved suppliers to an automotive OEM is more difficult than getting past the velvet ropes and burly doormen of an A-list LA nightclub—and no cash-palmed handshake will get you in. Getting vetted for acceptance as an approved supplier is an arduous and expensive process.

Since the 1970s the A-list is the only way to sell into the exclusive clubs of many of the automakers and their component suppliers, particularly the Detroit Three. Automakers command stringent adherence to their requirements for the components, materials, and fluids used in the manufacture of their vehicles. Yet, getting on the list still is no guarantee of sales. It is only the first step.

For manufacturers of green lubricants, the challenges have been great. Ecofriendly lubricant-makers IRMCO® and Metalloid have gotten automaker approval for their products—IRMCO for its nonoil, polymer-based (synthetic) lubricants and Metalloid for its biobased and synthetic lubricants.

IRMCO CEO Jeff Jeffery and Metalloid Vice President of Sales and Marketing Richard Strapple relay their firsthand experiences in attaining automaker approval for some of their products—and shine a spotlight on the fascinating approval process.

The Tests

  • Washability
  • Corrosion protection
  • Adhesive compatibility
  • Paint, pretreatment compatibility
  • Welding flammability
  • Welding residue
  • Waste treatability
  • MSDS review

SJ: Why is getting automaker approval so important?

Jeff Jeffery, IRMCO: Almost all of the OEMs—European, Japanese, North American—have some sort of process compatibility approval for paints, lubricants, and adhesives. Everything that goes into the car has to be vetted. Most of the OEMs make their own Class A parts, which is what’s on the outside—fenders, hoods, roofs, and door panels. Those are usually made at or very near the assembly plant.

But a lot of the inner panels and brackets are stamped by a Tier 1 or 2 supplier, so they come into the plant with a stamping lubricant residue on them and will be joined with the outer panels, either welded or affixed by adhesive. The assembly is then washed, pretreated, primed, and painted. That same stamping lubricant used at the Tier 1 facility has to be compatible with whatever’s at the assembly plant, and that’s where the approval process comes in.

Richard Strapple, Metalloid: Without automaker approval, no product will be used or purchased by automotive manufacturers. Without that approval number, you can never sell your lubricant to anyone. This is the first hurdle, but a major one.

Once you get automotive approval of a particular product [lubricant], the automaker puts it into a database and says, “OK, these lubricants are approved.” It becomes locked in concrete and is good for all of that particular automaker’s manufacturing plants. Any engineer within that automaker’s system looking for a lubricant can get into that corporate database and say, “Oh, I can use this lubricant or that lubricant.”

Figure 1
Parts are put through a water break-free test that examines whether the lubricant cleans off well. A lubricant-coated panel is run through the cleaning system and then water is poured over it. Does it sheet off, or does it bead up like water on a waxed car? If it beads up, it does not meet approval because it is not water break-free. Photo courtesy of IRMCO, Evanston, Ill.

Product approval does not guarantee your product will be used, only that it is on the approved list and can be used in the specific process it is intended for.

SJ: What is the process? What are the hurdles?

Jeffery: Let’s say I go to an OEM and say, “We have this new product.” They’ll say, “That’s great; go get it tested.”

Strapple: The lubricant manufacturer must perform both inside testing and outside testing of the lubricant at an independent, licensed lab that has been approved by the automaker. The lubricant manufacturer must pay for all outside testing necessary to gain approval.

Jeffery: The main tests are for washability, transit corrosion, adhesive compatibility, and paint compatibility [see Figure 1]. Some require tests for postweld residue, flammability, and waste treatability.

Strapple: In some instances, once the parts are formed, they are run through a finishing line that removes the lubricant with a cleaner before a protective coating is applied. This is usually what is known as a conversion coating—either zinc phosphate or iron phosphate—and that is followed by paint. So it’s critical that the lubricant can be cleaned off the part so it can receive that conversion coating and finish paint.

Jeffery: They also look at the lubricant’s ability to prevent transit or inventory corrosion. Will the part be rusty when it gets there? The condensing humidity test is the most popular rust test. A steel panel with lubricant residue goes through a series of 10 cycles in a condensing chamber to “sweat” for a period of time. The lubricant has to prevent rust through all 10 cycles.

Strapple: The adhesion test determines whether your metal forming lubricant will hinder adhesion of the metal part to another substance that is going to be attached to it.

Jeffery: A layer of lubricant and adhesive is sandwiched between two panels, cured, and then pulled apart. If the adhesive pulls off the metal, there’s not a very good bond, so there’s poor compatibility.

What if some of the lubricant gets into the paint and contaminates it? What if this part hasn’t been washed properly or there’s trapped lubricant, and then the whole car gets dipped into a paint or primer bath? Some paint baths are 20,000 gallons. You don’t want to dump that bath.

Figure 2
Each lubricant is tested for the specific material it will coat. One may work well on a specific alloy or grade, such as this 409 aluminized stainless steel tube, but poorly on another grade. Photo courtesy of Metalloid, Sturgis, Mich.

They may have a welding residue test. When you weld through it, does it leave a burn mark or carbon residue that can’t be painted over? Does the lubricant burst into flames or cause excessive smoke?

Sometimes they look at waste treatability. When you wash it off, it becomes part of a waste treatment system. Is it compatible?

All automakers look at the material safety data sheet (MSDS) before they even consider the product.

Strapple: If the lubricant fails any part of this testing, we must adjust or reformulate the lubricant and submit it again for the same test until it passes. If that occurs, it could be tested right away, or it could be six months to a year, and you’re back in line waiting again. One test can cost $6,000 a shot.

SJ: Why does each automaker require its own set of criteria?

Strapple: One reason is because they form different metals with different compositions and physical properties. One lubricant that works very well on a certain steel alloy can be horrible on another [see Figure 2]. If they are stamping 1100 aluminum with your lubricant, there might be no problem. Then they switch to 3003 or 6160T, and all of a sudden it’s a problem.

It also varies depending on what type of metal forming process the lubricant will be used in, such as progressive-die stamping, deep-drawing, bending, or fineblanking, and what type of materials it will come in contact with—metals, plastics, rubber, and so forth.

How the formed metal part is used by the consumer plays a role in the approval process too. For instance, if the part is going to end up as part of a mirror on the car, there is a rubber molding around it to hold that piece of metal in place. You must be sure any residual lubricant left on the metal will not harm the rubber molding. In essence, the lubricant cannot attack or change any surface on a part that it comes in contact with.

Jeffery: Each OEM has its own adhesives, paint formulations, and metal alloys. Germans have theirs, the Japanese have theirs, Americans have theirs. So they all have different tests.

SJ: What makes your product line green?

Figure 3
Green lubricants show good results in testing on galvanized advanced high-strength steels (AHSS). Photo courtesy of IRMCO, Evanston, Ill.

Jeffery: For starters, our formulation technology is more than half water. Water is our engineering material. We don’t need to have oil or solvents lying around our clients’ plants. When a batch is completed in our mixing kettles, we rinse them out with plain water. We have a very clean plant with very little chemical waste and no airborne VOCs. That reduces energy and chemicals to clean floors, dies, and the parts themselves.

We own a Microtox® instrument, which is used to determine fish kill levels when a chemical reaches the environment. We have a minimum environmental toxicity level for all of our products. We have some of the lowest levels in the world.

Strapple: Technically, petroleum-based means that the majority of the composition of the lubricant is oil with additives. In our industry jargon, synthetic means there is no oil in it. Typically, water is its base. Synthetic really means it is man-made as opposed to nature-made. So there have been two types of lubricants: petroleum-based and synthetic, and here comes a hybrid–biobased.

I didn’t think I’d live to see this since I started in 1973, but today petroleum oil is considered a hazardous ingredient. In fact, you must list it on the MSDS of your product.

Here’s where Metalloid moved away from the crowd. In 2001 we took the approach to eliminate petroleum oil and chlorinated paraffins in any and all future formulations. We drew the line and said no more business as usual. No more nasty, dirty products with hazardous ingredients in them. We replaced them with only natural, biodegradable, biorenewable, or biosustainable ingredients.

Just for the record, biodegradable means if you pour it on the ground, microorganisms and bacteria will eat it, and it will do no harm to the environment. Biorenewable means if the lubricant is made of soybean oil and we want to make more of it, we just go outside and plant more soybeans. Biosustainable means it is continuously renewable.

We soon realized that we could use more than plants; we could use animals and minerals. So today we use 23 different plants to make botanical lubricants. We use seven different species of fish oil to make corrosion preventives. What repels water better than a fish? And we use minerals, like calcium carbonate.

These are things that come from nature that we have an unlimited supply of and that work as well as, or better than, petroleum-based products. Botanicals clean off much more easily and paint much better than do their oil-based counterparts.

Also, our biobased lubricants are USDA-approved, which is a whole other approval process.

SJ: What about the possible detrimental effects of synthetic or biobased lubricants on galvanized steel?

Strapple: Whether lubricants are biobased or synthetic, they are not typically detrimental to galvanized or any other metals if formulated properly with the right inhibitors, friction modifiers, and lubricity additives. Galvanized is touchy to staining, sometimes called white rust, but we know that and put ingredients in so that it won’t stain. If correctly formulated, some biobased lubricants don’t even require inhibitors because they work so well.

Jeffery: We recently released a new heavy-duty synthetic lubricant for use on automotive galvanized and galvannealed metals [see Figure 3].

Zinc is used on automotive steel because it’s a sacrificial metal. While the zinc corrodes, the steel does not. When you stack or rack parts, they may touch. That contact and the water content create a galvanic reaction, almost like a battery cell.

Traditional oil-based or animal fat-based lubricants are inert, so when they coat the zinc, they slow that corrosion process. Until now, without oil to insulate the metal, water-based synthetics accelerated the corrosion. So, for a while, most heavy-duty synthetics couldn’t be used on zinc-coated components.

That’s why our lab came out with two completely different chemistries for zinc-coated metal. They’re still non-oil-containing materials. These products are extremely successful, and they’ve been independently evaluated by The Ohio State University Center for Precision Forming (OSU-CPF) as top performers on AHSS [advanced high-strength steels].

What’s happening now is that stampers are forming zinc-coated AHSS and UHSS [ultrahigh-strength steels]. Forming these new steels requires more energy and tonnage, creates higher operating temperatures, and is demanding on tools. So the lubricant plays even a bigger role than it has in the past. We now have two high-performance products that are very good on AHSS and don’t stain the zinc.

SJ: What has your approval experience been?

Jeffery: I can share that IRMCO’s products have been approved by Ford, Jaguar, Nissan, Honda, Mitsubishi, and Renault, as well as many e-coat paint suppliers. We are in the middle of getting approval at a couple of large European OEMs.

Strapple: We have both a botanical and a synthetic product approved by Nissan and we manufacture several lubricants that have gained automotive approval. We continue to work with the automotive industry to secure more approvals.

Jeffery: It’s an extremely frustrating and expensive process—and it doesn’t need to be. For example, the 10-cycle condensing humidity test is now obsolete; yet many OEMs still require it. Back in the ’60s and ’70s, before JIT, parts were stamped all over the country. That panel with lubricant on it might have to prevent rust from the East Coast to the West Coast, traveling up and down mountains and through the desert or near the ocean’s saltwater. The part moved from hot to cold, moist to dry, and back again, so the stamping lubricant had to prevent rust in all these atmospheric conditions before it was washed off.

Well, lean manufacturing changed all that. You don’t stamp parts in Baltimore and ship them to California anymore. You ship them 20 miles from the Tier 1 supplier to the assembly plant or across the state line. Parts might be shipped to Europe or Mexico, but additional precautions are taken to protect against rust.

Strapple: A typical automaker might have as many as 200 approved metal forming lubricants. Some American automakers are not really even looking anymore. We would like to see the automotive industry employ a more open-minded approach to new technology. This would improve their productivity and profitability.

Jeffery: It’s a broken system. It’s not fast enough to bring new technology forward. One OEM recently approved our product, which is great and we are grateful for that. But it took two years. In the meantime, we developed a new, better product. Do we want to go through this again? Two more years? The whole series of tests can cost $100,000.

Another OEM approved our product using its new global green standards. Ours was the first product to pass those standards. But they still have products on their list that do not meet the new standards. Some of them are 60 to 80 years old.

I was in a plant recently that was using one of the approved petroleum-based lubricants, and a lift truck couldn’t get up a ramp because it kept slipping on oil. They had to tow it out of the shop. They’re forced to use the oil approved by their OEM customer even though it causes environmental and housekeeping problems. They’re supposed to be ISO 14001, but they can’t stop using oil. So that’s frustrating.

SJ: Why does green matter? Wouldn’t it just be easier to sell petroleum-based lubricants?

Jeffery: IRMCO turned 100 years old this year. We’re under fourth-generation family ownership. We started as a conventional oil company. We sold the same thing everyone else did.

Three events affected me.

First was the landmark “The Crying Indian” [http://www.adcouncil.org/Our-Campaigns/The-Classics/Pollution-Keep-America-Beautiful-Iron-Eyes-Cody] Keep America Beautiful commercial that I saw as a boy. There’s a version where he’s canoeing down a polluted river and sees glop coming out of a drain pipe into the river. It ends with him seeing all this litter on the river.

Second, in 1968 I saw a news story about Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River catching fire. It caught fire every summer. I was 11 years old, and I asked my dad, “How does a river catch on fire?” He said, “Well, water doesn’t burn; it’s the oil on top of the river that’s on fire.” I asked, “Why is there oil on the river?” And he answered, “There are a lot of factories in Cleveland that use oil. Many are our customers. When they’re done with it, they dump it in the river.” Like where else are they going to put it? It really bothered me. That glop I saw the native American canoeing past was our product!

Third, in 1979, when I was finishing up my economics degree, there was no economic cost to polluting the environment. The EPA was around, but you could pollute rivers, lakes, streams, and the air, and there were no fines. Nothing.

I thought, “That’s an unsustainable business model and it’s really inefficient. We’re going to use up all our resources. We’re going to ruin the water and air.” So that’s what I wrote my senior thesis on: the economic cost of the environment. There is no such thing as a “free environment.”

When I was a young salesman working for my father, I approached him and said, “Dad, I can’t do this anymore. I don’t want to sell oils. I don’t want to sell against brand X and have a cheaper product or better service. We need to have better technology to compete.” He said, “You’re right.” That was 1982.

From then on IRMCO’s mantra has been “Do no harm.” Art Dampts, who was our vice president of R&D then, developed non-petroleum-based lubricants. Soon after that we found out that my dad was dying of cancer. He lasted five years. During those five years he became extremely focused on the environment and the impact our company could have on improving it. We have never looked back.

Strapple: Green does matter and must matter for obvious reasons. No, it is not necessarily easier to sell petroleum-based lubricants. Fortunately, manufacturing has become more and more conscious of the environment. We have encountered many corporations that have added a “green technology mandate” in their manufacturing plans.

In some cases it is more cost-effective for them to employ green technology in manufacturing. With green lubricant technology, we can form any part with as good finished quality as with petroleum oils. Plus, the parts are cleaner, easier to weld, and have considerably better corrosion protection.

Biobased lubricants are biodegradable, biorenewable, and biosustainable. Those terms do not—and will not ever—apply to petroleum oil. You can’t plant more petroleum oil. It was formed 250 million years ago. When the current oil reserve is used up, it’s gone forever. No chemist, no Big Oil company, nobody in the world can make more oil. The oil companies don’t want you to hear that. They want green to happen as much as you want to break both your legs.

That is not the case with green products. When we run out, we just plant more. There’s a continuous supply of fish.

We have applied our corporate commitment to this green technology across all of our product lines, not just metal forming lubricants, but with machining coolants, wire drawing lubricants, cleaners, corrosion preventives, and microlubrication, or dry machining. We live green and prosper from it. Metalloid knows that the future of the world we share, our planet, and all living things depend on everyone working together to make profound changes. It is not enough to practice recycling at home. We must go green in all aspects of our lives. This includes using products and services in the manufacturing industry that are friendly to both the environment and people.

About the Author

Kate Bachman

Contributing editor

815-381-1302

Kate Bachman is a contributing editor for The FABRICATOR editor. Bachman has more than 20 years of experience as a writer and editor in the manufacturing and other industries.