From personal experience, I can count on one hand the number of times that wd40 (edit: at least the canonical formulation) has been the best lubricant for a given application.

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cucumber3732842 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Being a recognized household name makes it infinity less likely you'll have someone complaining if you use it in a "nice" setting.

That makes it the "best" for a lot of "anything works" applications.

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convolvatron 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

for me its that its not at all long lasting. I guess it's fine as a cleaner, but even light mineral oil hangs around longer.

oh right, it also seems to leave a gummy residue, which is really not great for machine tools

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b00ty4breakfast 7 hours ago | parent [-]

yeah, most of my use-cases for classic wd-40 have always been getting things unstuck rather than long-term lubrication. The lubricating action tends to evaporate with the solvent(s) and leaves, as you've pointed out, the famous gummy residue that is good for keeping moisture out but not at being a lubricant

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senderista 7 hours ago | parent [-]

why not use penetrating oil?

	▲	b00ty4breakfast 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		if I have my druthers, it's kroil but there was a time before I knew better, haha.