TLT: How did you first get started in the field of tribology?
Plint: When I was 29 years old, my father asked me when I was going to give up being a soldier and do a “proper” job. He wanted someone “captive” to look after his latest pet project. He had been working on tribological problems since before the advent of the word tribology.

My father returned from India in 1948, having been a technical officer in the Indian Army, during and after World War II. He joined a company called Stuart Turner Ltd., where my grandfather, despite having left school at 14 years old, and having survived the full length of World War I, ended up as engineering director. My father completed the task of finishing a number of his late father’s engine designs, then set about falling out with everyone else, so left to set up his own company, Plint and Partners Ltd. That was in 1956. From the very start, tribology-related projects (although the term tribology had not been invented at that stage) were evident. In the early years, he designed journal bearing test rigs for Glacier Metals, seal test rigs for Morgan Crucible, two roller machines for The Monsanto Co., high-speed rolling four-ball machines for the UK National Engineering Laboratory, rail friction and traction machines for British Rail Research, wear testing machines for Rolls-Royce—the list goes on!

My father was friends and collaborated with the late STLE Life Member Ken Johnson at the University of Cambridge, STLE Life Member Duncan Dowson at the University of Leeds and, of course, Alastair Cameron at Imperial College, London. Whether my father and Cameron were well-suited as business partners is moot; Cameron was very clever but could sometimes lack attention to detail, whereas my father was in no way fault tolerant. He used to say: “I may have faults but being wrong is not one of them!” It is not surprising that we couldn’t keep the show on the road for more than a few years, but people still remember the Cameron-Plint name more than 30 years after it ceased to exist.

TLT: How long have you been working in the field of tribology?
Plint: Thirty-seven years, although, curiously, even before I knew much about tribology, I had been doing work on abrasive wear of tank tracks while in the military.

TLT: You have done lots of other things during your career. Why has tribology endured?
Plint: Soldiering might have endured, but I am not sure I would have made a good staff officer if I had stayed for a full career.

My specialty at the University of Cambridge (I was lucky enough to do an in-service degree) was thermodynamics and fluid mechanics for aerospace propulsion. Even 40 years ago, the number of companies requiring that particular skill set was pretty limited. I knew two members of the original Power Jets team, a company set up by Frank Whittle that designed and manufactured jet engines, and my father knew Whittle, plus his cousin ran the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough, during World War II. I couldn’t help concluding I was just born a generation too late to have a career in that world.

In the 1980s, I did a lot with computer control and data acquisition, micro-controllers, process automation, etc., and we should probably have pursued that more aggressively, but we didn’t really have the resources or, indeed, will, to make that our core business.

Tribology, because of its huge range and diversity, continues to fascinate me. It’s almost impossible not to find new problems to investigate and new things to learn on an almost daily basis. Some years ago, I said to an old friend (professor Mark Gee at the UK National Physical Laboratory) that, after 25 years working in the field, I felt I still knew almost nothing! He said, “Don’t worry, if you think you know nothing, there are lots of people who know even less!”

If you do anything long enough, you end up, by default, becoming a sort of expert. Having a good memory is, of course, an asset. Although focusing on just one area of tribology, perhaps, makes sense commercially, and in academia, for me, being a generalist has proved much more entertaining.

TLT: Is the demand for tribological testing declining or simply changing?
Plint: Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, we have remained incredibly busy, but what we are doing now is radically different from what we were doing just a year ago, and the customer base has changed somewhat. Traditionally, we relied quite heavily on internal combustion engine-based oil and automotive clients, plus a bit of aerospace, but these sectors are in deep sleep. Current work has a lot to do with vehicle electrification, including a lot to do with rolling element bearings, electrical discharge through bearings, reverse loading of components in the drivetrain, during regenerative braking, etc. Then there are completely new areas. For example, we are just completing our first high-pressure hydrogen tribometer. There is still quite a lot going on with sliding-rolling contacts for traction and in gears.


The global pandemic is likely to stimulate rapid technological change. In Europe it’s already happening, with sales of electric vehicles and hybrids increasing sharply.

TLT: Where do you think the challenges lie for the future?
Plint: We all know that wars stimulate rapid technological change, and I can’t help feeling that the global pandemic is likely to have a very similar effect, of which the most obvious, certainly in Europe, will be in the automotive sector. It’s already happening, with sales of electric vehicles and hybrids increasing sharply and major car manufacturers abandoning diesel engines. A knock-on effect on manufacturers of automatic transmissions is inevitable.

At a more esoteric level, with cutbacks and retirements, I can’t help feeling there is going to be a massive loss of knowledge. From a business point of view, that’s not bad for us; we end up telling people stuff they knew 30 years ago and charging them for the privilege! Let’s just call that the destruction of intellectual capital!

You can reach George Plint at info@phoenix-tribology.com.