Moebius 9504 synthetic grease: small white particles

[ifibrin]

I just got some moebius 9504 synthetic grease, and I realized that there are some small white particles suspended in it. Is this normal?

[nickelsilver]

That's normal. There's a lot of speculation what the "little white balls" are, but Moebius just says it is based on 9501 with the addition of a metallic soap so it works better under high pressure. It's a great grease.

[clockboy]

I don’t think that is right. When time I will check my pot of 9504

[JohnR725]

5 hours ago, nickelsilver said:

That's normal. There's a lot of speculation what the "little white balls" are, but Moebius just says it is based on 9501 with the addition of a metallic soap so it works better under high pressure. It's a great grease.

I would agree is an outstanding grease it's now my favorite. As far as speculation goes why speculate if you have the tech sheet? Oh wait Swatch has gotten clever now they conveniently failed to mention what that white stuff is but in the older tech sheet it tells you exactly what it is. there is really is no mystery if you have the right tech sheet which I'm attaching. okay apparently I'm not attaching as there is now a warning message as you can no longer attach Acrobat files?  So there's a way around that all just snip out the relevant image.

[ifibrin]

On 10/1/2021 at 4:19 AM, JohnR725 said:

I would agree is an outstanding grease it's now my favorite. 

 

On 9/30/2021 at 10:22 PM, nickelsilver said:

It's a great grease.

@VWatchie 

Does anyone else actually prefer Molykote DX to moebius 9504? 9504 is certainly much more expensive and also highly recommended, but I actually find myself preferring to use Molykote DX due to DX being smoother in consistency. The white grains of boron nitride in 9504 are kind of disconcerting, especially in the small amounts used, you can sometimes see a large white grain when you lubricate a small winding pinion etc.

[VWatchie]

29 minutes ago, ifibrin said:

Does anyone else actually prefer Molykote DX to moebius 9504?

I've never tried Molykote DX or Moebius 9504. The closest I've come is 9501 which needs to be stirred before it is used, but I think that goes for other greases as well (9504?). I know Mark recommends Molykote DX as an excellent inexpensive grease, but I'd like to try 9504 the next time I go grease shopping (if I can afford it).

It's interesting to note that grease is used extremely sparingly in the technical documents from ETA. They don't even recommend it for the underside of the cannon pinion with driving wheel. Normally it is just recommended for the winding pinion and perhaps some other part in the keyless works or the calendar works. If we're mostly doing modern ETA movements perhaps Molykote DX would make more sense...?!

Edited October 11, 2021 by VWatchie

[ifibrin]

1 hour ago, VWatchie said:

I've never tried Molykote DX or Moebius 9504. The closest I've come is 9501 which needs to be stirred before it is used, but I think that goes for other greases as well (9504?). I know Mark recommends Molykote DX as an excellent inexpensive grease, but I'd like to try 9504 the next time I go grease shopping (if I can afford it).

It's interesting to note that grease is used extremely sparingly in the technical documents from ETA. They don't even recommend it for the underside of the cannon pinion with driving wheel. Normally it is just recommended for the winding pinion and perhaps some other part in the keyless works or the calendar works. If we're mostly doing modern ETA movements perhaps Molykote DX would make more sense...?!

I tried 9504, but I quite prefer Molykote DX; if you dislike the consistency of 9501 (because it needs to be stirred), I think you will find 9504 even more disagreeable: there’s somewhat unevenly sized grains of boron nitride, and 9504 appears to have a slight propensity to separate into a thin blue layer of oil at the top of the vial.

[clockboy]

Lubricants in horology is in down to an individual’s preference. Mobius is a trusted lubricant IMO if in doubt then go for this brand. However I am always looking for alternatives. Recently I purchased some grease with PTFE added to its formula for clock mainsprings and it is showing really good results but I dare say some will disagree. 

[JohnR725]

6 hours ago, VWatchie said:

It's interesting to note that grease is used extremely sparingly in the technical documents from ETA. They don't even recommend it for the underside of the cannon pinion with driving wheel. Normally it is just recommended for the winding pinion and perhaps some other part in the keyless works or the calendar works. If we're mostly doing modern ETA movements perhaps Molykote DX would make more sense...?!

I do hope if you're following their lubrication requirements that you follow all of their requirements? In other words they're not using grease which usually has the habit of staying wherever you put it there using oil. But there also surface treating just about the entire watch so that the oil stays wherever it's put.

it's one of the irritations I have with technical documentation is it doesn't always tell the complete story. It's only relatively modern times where they start to reference that their surface treating just about the entire watch. They been doing this since the 50s but usually it was in a separate documentation. So you do have to be careful when you follow the manufacturer's recommendation that you follow all of the recommendations.

6 hours ago, VWatchie said:

I've never tried Molykote DX or Moebius 9504. The closest I've come is 9501 which needs to be stirred before it is used, but I think that goes for other greases as well (9504?)

I think what you're seeing is is the results of this grease having this property of being thixotropic. below I have a couple of links the manufacturers webpage for the various greases and a Wikipedia link explaining what that word means. you'll notice from Wikipedia the grease has interesting properties of not being always grease sometimes it's basically oil. Which is what I think you're seeing is the separation of the oil from the solid parts. I've noticed this on other greases that they have like the 9415 that we use on escapement's. Also the 8200 mainspring grease that always has the oil floating on the surface and has to be mixed up.

6 hours ago, ifibrin said:

I tried 9504, but I quite prefer Molykote DX; if you dislike the consistency of 9501 (because it needs to be stirred), I think you will find 9504 even more disagreeable: there’s somewhat unevenly sized grains of boron nitride, and 9504 appears to have a slight propensity to separate into a thin blue layer of oil at the top of the vial.

it might have been mentioned before but basically the 9504 is the 9501 with the extra powder mixed in. Then I'm sure that the uneven grain size is either optical illusion or just lumps of powder because usually powdered lubricants have to be super fine to do their job.

https://www.moebius-lubricants.ch/en/products/greases

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thixotropy

 

[VWatchie]

43 minutes ago, JohnR725 said:

But there also surface treating just about the entire watch so that the oil stays wherever it's put.

Yes, when I do modern ETA movements I surface treat the parts that ETA decree should be surface treated. For example, I have documented what I do in this ETA 2804-2 service walk-through (2nd picture) and this ETA 2836-2 service walkthrough (1st picture).

Still, I'm surprised to see that certain parts that aren't surface treated in the documentation, like the underside of the cannon pinion with driving wheel, gets Moebius HP-1300 rather than a grease. Perhaps ETA missed to document the surface treatment of these parts!? I've noticed that their technical communications on occasion contain some contradictions ans omissions, like the lubrication of the pallets and lubricating the same part at the same spot with two different lubricants.

It shall be interesting to see how well Sellita documents their movement service once I get a chance to service one of them.

[JohnR725]

18 minutes ago, VWatchie said:

Still, I'm surprised to see that certain parts that aren't surface treated in the documentation, like the underside of the cannon pinion with driving wheel, gets Moebius HP-1300 rather than a grease. Perhaps ETA missed to document the surface treatment of these parts!? I've noticed that their technical communications on occasion contain some contradictions ans omissions, like the lubrication of the pallets and lubricating the same part at the same spot with two different lubricants.

if you look carefully at the eta 2804 document one of the reasons they may not surface treat the Canon pinion assembly is that they're basically lubricating everything with HP oil. The center wheel jewel is lubricated the friction points of their center wheel and the shaft itself it goes on.

we also get problems of how occurred is the tech sheet and seeing as how Swatch group typically doesn't like us do not going to update the tech sheets on the eta website you'll have to have access the newer documentation.

what you might be seeing on the escapement lubrication is originally if you have an old enough document I believe it's 9010 for the pallet stones. Later on it was 941 then they came out with the 9415 supposedly for higher frequency watches only. Then Debbie documentation that was either or and now it's just the grease. But maybe it's because all the watches are higher frequency now or they know watchmakers are cheap and are only going to use one lubricant anyway.

I snipped out to images from two separate Omega documents which shows you that they're not entirely truthful? The old one in black and white although thanks to Acrobat screwing up its black and yellow light yellow notice what they surface treated in the 50s? Then the other image is from 2019 notice the before and after so before and unfortunately this is a coaxial escapement example that's why there is that weird escape wheel slid treating the pallet fork and escape wheel in the early example. Then currently they treating just about everything except the balance wheel and the bridge and some other mystery components. Yes the Omega or Swatch group service center the final rinse of I think it's a separate machine is filled with this stuff and they go through it by the gallons huge quantities they use. It's because they feel that with the newer cleaning methods though remove the surface treatment that the factory put on so there replacing it.

But you do get a discrepancy from the 50s look at all the stuff they're treating then later on they say all look we just treating a few things and now they're back to treating everything again. But in real life the factory service treats way more things than your aware of. Notice the reference to surface treating the balance pivots that's to keep the oil from running down the pivots. If you look carefully at the eta manufacturing guide for watch it will tell you that the balance staff the entire thing was surface treated just because it's easier to treat the entire staff than just the pivots. But notice in the technical sheets there is no mention at all of surface treating those pivots? Minor discrepancies in technical documentation.

[ifibrin]

I don’t think it’s an optical illusion, but it could very well be clumps of boron nitride sticking together in 9504. In any event these larger clumps of boron nitride would get ground up by the sliding action of the parts into a finer suspension of dry lubricant during use. I just found these larger lumps a bit off-putting, since 9504 isn’t as consistent in smoothness as a result. Technically molykote dx does also has small white particles suspended in it (molybdenum sulfide powder, which you can barely see at 10x magnification) but it’s very very fine and evenly distributed.

6 hours ago, JohnR725 said:

it might have been mentioned before but basically the 9504 is the 9501 with the extra powder mixed in. Then I'm sure that the uneven grain size is either optical illusion or just lumps of powder because usually powdered lubricants have to be super fine to do their job.