Threaded Cartridge Grease Guns

JWR · May 13, 2019

If you search using Google or in Amazon for 'Lube Shuttle grease guns' or for 'Air-Tec' there is quite a bit of info on these wonderful sounding German made tools. But only one company and that in Europe. There are 2 or 3 You Tube videos on the advantages and convenience of these guns. Most of the buzz regarding this "new" product seems to have been early 2018 here in the US. Might have been on before that (?) It is an extremely attractive tool bypassing the mess we all are used to with grease guns filling, leaking, wasting grease, etc. Using a screw-in plastic cartridge, zero mess, no plunger to pull, even talk about refilling the cartridges... I thought this product would take the market by storm in the US and soon make all those grungy old grease guns obsolete. A cordless electric version exists for volume users.

Yet in over a year since first seeing the You Tube demos and finding them on Amazon for sale the following seems true:

There are no sources showing up in the US
No competing brands of the devices have shown up
Tractor dealers never heard of them
Shipping ranges to around $20 or more from Europe
Cartridges are over $8 each even when you buy 10 of them. No place local to buy cartridges.
A gun, 10 cartridges and shipping running $130 or so -- pricing themselves out of the market with only one source.

This (lack of market uptake and action on what looks like a breakthrough) amazes me. I expected an explosion and have seen no action at all.

Anyone out there seen more than one supplier? Stores carrying them in the states ? Marketing news ?

mikester · May 13, 2019

Sign me up for small proprietary, likely over priced, hard to find, more disposable plastic waste, screw in grease cartridges!

Sorry, not going to happen when I can buy bulk grease in 20L pails with a drop in pneumatic grease pump.

Sounds like a product Apple should start selling.

LouNY · May 13, 2019

We switched over to the grease "tubes" well over 25 years ago from the bulk buckets.
Much easier to keep clean, easy to refill grease gun out in the field.
A large variety of grease available.
Always have 2-3 lever type manual grease guns around, plus the Lincoln Pneumatic,
I keep looking at the cordless electrics.

WranglerX · May 13, 2019

Small tractor user and various "things" around home does not make big time, expensive grease gun practical, have 25+ year old cartridge gun that I get refills at local O'Rilleys AP (only one within 25 miles).... Maybe takes me 10 minutes longer to squirt excessive amount of grease all over everything and same 30 minutes to clean up.... Maybe use 1-3 tubes a year.... Why do I need better (more expensive) system... If I was running a service shop or truck, YEAH, would be big volume barrels and pneumatic's sure.... Not sure where high cost small production, poorly supported product fits in...

Biggest thing on my maintenance list would be ...

LockNLube(R) Grease Coupler | LockNLube(R) - LOCKNLUBE

Dale

schoolsout · May 13, 2019

I love my Milwaukee M18 grease guns!

Industrial Toys · May 13, 2019

My Dad met some guy on an airplane to Germany that sells those. Anyway, they sent me samples. I likes the tubes but not the gun. Reminds me of a cork screw with those two wings, only bigger. A regular grease gun you could lay down and pump if need be. this thing you need two hands for. I'm sure there are other guns, that's just what I got.

Now I have used up the grease and was thinking of scrapping the gun.

JWR · May 13, 2019

LouNY said:
We switched over to the grease "tubes" well over 25 years ago from the bulk buckets.
Much easier to keep clean, easy to refill grease gun out in the field.
A large variety of grease available.
Always have 2-3 lever type manual grease guns around, plus the Lincoln Pneumatic,
I keep looking at the cordless electrics.

Lou, I think you missed what this gadget is --- sure we all use the ordinary tubes of grease that you buy at any hardware store or tractor supply place. This German designed grease gun uses cartridges which look similar BUT they simply screw in -- zero mess, no plunger, no seeping all over the place where ever you hang it.

JWR · May 13, 2019

Industrial Toys said:
My Dad met some guy on an airplane to Germany that sells those. Anyway, they sent me samples. I likes the tubes but not the gun. Reminds me of a cork screw with those two wings, only bigger. A regular grease gun you could lay down and pump if need be. this thing you need two hands for. I'm sure there are other guns, that's just what I got.

Now I have used up the grease and was thinking of scrapping the gun.

That is very strange. Probably in Europe they have a lot of gun designs that we would never see. "A cork screw with wings" is hard to picture. If you look at the existing products from Air-Tec they have a couple of designs that look exactly like the plain old $15 guns we have all used for years -- one model with squeeze handles and the other with a long lever. The whole point here is the grease cartridge, the handling, the ease of changing and the total lack of a mess.

JWR · May 13, 2019

mikester said:
Sign me up for small proprietary, likely over priced, hard to find, more disposable plastic waste, screw in grease cartridges!

Sorry, not going to happen when I can buy bulk grease in 20L pails with a drop in pneumatic grease pump.

Sounds like a product Apple should start selling.

I would guess that 80% of us delivering web opinions here on TBN use plain old simple grease guns, never bought a 20 liter pail of grease in our life, and do not want an air hose required to where we want to grease something.

Yes, right now the things are very overpriced, they are proprietary (or at least not yet multi-sourced), and so far hard to find in the US ... but the plastic waste point is grasping for very obscure straws.

Unlike your opinion, I predict the screw in cartridge designs will take over 90% of the market for hand-held grease guns. It is simply a question of when.

The very minute that someone (like Tractor Supply or 1 or 2 of the big name tractor mfrs) start selling the things and stocking the cartridges the market will explode over night.

[By the way, for bulk grease users there exists a rig for sale in Europe that facilitates you reloading the screw-in cartridges from a drum of grease...]