Re: IS this grease really for all uses?
there's 2 parts to a grease you need to know, the base oil in the grease and the thickener which makes up the grease.
With the base oil you want the proper viscosity for the application, typically lower viscosity for higher speed and lower temperatures. Also application specific is to what extent additives are in that oil which will diffentiate the grease as an EP (extreme-pressure) grease to varying degrees. The thickener part of the grease is what most people don't know about and what gets you into trouble. You don't want to mix greases of different thickener types because while the base oils in them are almost always compatible and mixable, the thickeners oftentimes are not. The result of mixing incompatible thickeners are they will harden and cake up under use, which then prevents the oil from reabsorbing back into the thickener. The oil as a liquid runs out of the area when the appliation is shut down and lubrication is lost; it's the oil that lubricates not the thickener.
Most marine greases, like lubrimatic, use thickeners that are sodium or calcium bases, I can't remember which. But it usually says on the tube. As long as the new grease you're going to use has the same thickener as the grease currently in the application, everything should be ok. The most common greases are lithium based but you'll see the calcium or sodium greases in marine applications because of their thickeners increased water resistance relative to cost. Aluminum complex grease is probably the most water resistance and also the most tacky of all, also much more expensive, which may be what is used as spline grease. In addition, spline greases will differ by having higher viscosity oil with more EP additives because of the speed and how frictional surfaces contact each other, compared to a roller bearing which is much lower friction and higher speed. For that reason, you wouldn't want to use a spline grease for a roller (gimbal) bearing- the oil would be overloaded with EP adds and have too high a viscosity for the inteneded use. And a bearing grease wouldn't have a high enough viscosity oil to stay put nor the EP adds to protect the sliding motion of splines and ujoints. Why they continue to tout teflon as a desireable additive in lubricant products I don't know, dupont must be helping them market it.
http://www.mindconnection.com/library/handyman/greasecompat.htm
http://www.reliabilityweb.com/art04/understanding_grease.htm
http://www.bobistheoilguy.com/GREASE/index.htm
