The dropping point of a soap-thickened lubricating grease is the temperature at which it passes from a semi-solid to a liquid state under specific test conditions. It is an indication of the type of thickener used, and a measure of the cohesiveness of the oil and thickener of a grease.
Dropping point is used in combination with other testable properties to determine the suitability of greases for specific applications. It is applicable only to greases that contain soap thickeners. Greases with other thickeners, such as many synthetic greases, do not change state. Instead, they separate oil, and the dropping point as a phase transition does not apply.
Read more about Dropping Point: ASTM Test Procedure, Other Test Procedures
Famous quotes containing the words dropping and/or point:
“When life has been well spent, age is a loss of what it can well spare,—muscular strength, organic instincts, gross bulk, and works that belong to these. But the central wisdom, which was old in infancy, is young in fourscore years, and dropping off obstructions, leaves in happy subjects the mind purified and wise.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“As for work, without it, without painstaking work, any writer or artist definitely remains a dilettante; there’s no point in waiting for so-called blissful moments, for inspiration; if it comes, so much the better—but you keep working anyway.”
—Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1818–1883)