Vibralign Blog

"laser alignment tool"| hold down bolts| jack bolts| Precision Shaft Alignment| Repeatability| soft foot| troubleshooting

By Brad Case on November 9, 2016

Over the years we have fielded several technical support calls from maintenance personnel having repeatability and soft foot issues (during an alignment) all of which had a common issue; other influences. Meaning not the typical looseness, coupling backlash, soft foot issues. During the “heat of the battle” to get the precision shaft alignment job finished […]

Cooling Towers| Fixturlaser NXA Pro| Pre-Alignment| Precision Shaft Alignment| roughing in

By Richard Talley on November 4, 2016

Performing Precision Shaft Alignments on Cooling Towers present a unique set of challenges. A recent job is typical of what I find. We were originally called out because on three cooling towers the motors were experiencing high vibration. Some of the challenges include: 1 – Access through shrouds 2 – Ladders often required to gain […]

Precision Shaft Alignment| realigning America| realigning America scholarship| Verti-Zontal Process

By Steve Matthews on October 27, 2016

If you have not heard of VibrAlign’s Realigning America Seminar Series, you should.  We have been hosting these seminars since 2013 focused on bringing alignment fundamentals to our industrial clientele in a short, half day, free educational event.  Since its inception, these programs which evolve to meet customer needs, have been to roughly 90 venues […]

condition monitoring| equipment reliability| maintenance reliability| reliability

By Mac MacCormack on October 20, 2016

As a technical trainer for VibrAlign, I do a lot of reading in order to hopefully continuously improve. I am also very curious.  Quite often I run across articles I believe are worth sharing. This article was on LinkedIn, an IDCON reliability and maintenance discussion written by Mr. Ken Latino. In case you have not […]

Fixturlaser| misalignment| offset and angularity| Precision Shaft Alignment| Verti-Zontal Process

By Tom Shelton on October 11, 2016

Every tool in your toolbox has a specific function and certain parameters of use to achieve a desired outcome. When you pull out a claw hammer, your intent is to drive or pull a nail. Pull out a ball peen hammer, it is still a hammer, however the use and outcome is different. You may […]

backlash| Pre-Alignment| Precision Shaft Alignment| roughing in| soft foot

By Mac MacCormack on September 30, 2016

It really doesn’t matter the industry; industrial maintenance technicians suffer the same frustrations when performing a precision shaft alignment. Our team of trainer’s travel all over the country conducting training classes for paper mills, steel mills, chemical plants, gas and oil, etc. What we hear is universal across all industry. “I can’t get repeatable results, […]

angular misalignment| offset and angularity| offset misalignment| Precision Shaft Alignment| shaft alignment tolerances| soft foot

By James Pekarek on September 22, 2016

When performing a precision laser shaft alignment, it is best to add or remove shims exactly as the display unit indicates.  There are circumstances when this may not be possible due to your assortment of shims, or when you want to “fudge” your shims slightly to keep the total number of shims low. (Clink for […]

condition monitoring| machinery diagnostics| machinery vibration

By Stan Riddle on September 15, 2016

Resonance is when a force causes an object to “resonate”, due to excitation of its natural frequency.  Think of a machine coasting down to a stop.  There are certain speeds in coasting down that excite natural frequencies of the machine components.  This is often observed in the coast down of a bench grinder.  As the […]

machinery diagnostics| ONEPROD Hawk

By The VibrAlign Blog on September 14, 2016

VibrAlign Inc. announces the HAWK Pump Challenge.  The Challenge is designed to expose mechanics and reliability personnel to modern machinery diagnostics by applying the HAWK’s built-in automatic diagnostic software to analyze their most troublesome pump. When machinery mechanics or reliability personnel sign up for the HAWK Pump Challenge they will be contacted to set up […]

realigning America| shim stack| shims

By Stan Riddle on September 1, 2016

We recently received a customer request about shim safety.  An employee at the customer site had experienced a “near miss” safety issue due to walking too closely to a machine, and getting their clothes caught against a shim.  Since I have a scar on my right thumb caused by a 3 mil shim, I thought […]

"shaft alignment"| Balancing| bearing failures| misalignment| ONEPROD Hawk

By Mac MacCormack on August 24, 2016

Past maintenance & production issues found in the industrial or manufacturing environment are still prevalent even in today’s equipment reliability focus. The major contributors to equipment failure remain the same, misalignment, unbalance and assembly errors. Another is lubrication, Mr. Stan Riddle addressed this in one his blogs “Machinery Vibration Problems part 3 – Lubrication”. Let’s […]

bearing failures| bearings| misalignment| Precision Shaft Alignment| shaft alignment tolerances

By Brad Case on August 17, 2016

Simply put, L10 bearing life is the number of service hours that 90% of bearings will survive or conversely 10% of bearings will have failed. L10 life: is the preferred term in specifying bearing life and is defined by The American Bearing Manufacturers Association (ABMA). A bearing life equation is: This calculation assumes proper installation […]

ACOEM| condition monitoring| machinery vibration| OneProd Falcon| Paper Machine Rolls

By Bertrand Wascat on August 10, 2016

As my grandma used to say, “When you don’t know how to use your head, you’d better know how to use your legs”. Thanks to a feature on our FALCON data collector I didn’t have to call her to tell her how right she was (again)! Two of us were performing data collection on a […]

bearing failures| condition monitoring| machinery diagnostics| machinery vibration| ONEPROD Hawk

By Stan Riddle on August 3, 2016

Mechanical looseness is a very common machine vibration diagnosis.  It is often overused-becoming a “catch all” category for undiagnosed vibration.  It can be caused by a multitude of things that may seem to have no relationship to each other, such as:   Loose bolting                                               Coupling looseness or backlash Belts Too Loose                                           Cracked welds Improper bearing […]

angular misalignment| condition monitoring| machinery diagnostics| machinery vibration| ONEPROD Hawk

By Steve Matthews on July 27, 2016

This is a subject that comes up relatively frequently with our customers and observations from the field.  The purpose of today’s blog post is to illustrate what can and often does happen.  While misalignment can and does present with easily identifiable vibration signals; often it does not.  Misalignment may be present in a machine, developing […]