Vibralign Blog

condition monitoring| machinery vibration| pump cavitaion| pump vibration| Vibration Analysis

By Stan Riddle on August 2, 2017

Most people who work on, or around pumps are familiar with the term “cavitation”.  It is often used as a catch all phrase for any flow-related vibration on pumps, and is often reported by vibration analysts when: Pump noise level is high, Pump vibration is erratic, with lots of “noise” in the spectrum. But there […]

Balancing| condition monitoring| machinery diagnostics| ONEPROD Hawk| rotor unbalance| unbalance

By Stan Riddle on June 20, 2017

Electric motors are almost always well-balanced when they leave the motor manufacturer.  But occasionally, motor unbalance problems are picked up with vibration monitoring tools, such as the OneProd Hawk. Here are some easy troubleshooting methods to determine the cause of unbalance in the motor. An electric motor’s rotor, like any rotating mass, cannot become out […]

condition monitoring| Hawk| machinery diagnostics| machinery vibration| ONEPROD Hawk| Vibration Analysis

By Stan Riddle on May 25, 2017

Gearboxes are common in industry.  They are used to increase or decrease speed from the driver, provide increased torque, and change direction of power transmission.   There are two main types of commonly-used gearboxes:   GEARBOX TYPE Parallel or Standard Gearbox-one where the input and output shafts are parallel. Bevel or Right Angle Gearbox-one where […]

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

By Michael Keohane on May 10, 2017

Knowing the correct shaft speed of both shafts on a belt-driven machine is important when performing machinery diagnostics. Ideally you would do this by first identifying the input and output speeds using a strobe light, photo tach or laser tach. Once you know the accurate speed of both components, use this formula to determine the […]

belt alignment| belt hog| condition monitoring| Fixturlaser EVO| ONEPROD Hawk| Precision Shaft Alignment

By Mac MacCormack on March 16, 2017

Proactive Maintenance includes a number of maintenance strategies, such as Precision Maintenance, Reliability Based Maintenance, Reliability Centered Maintenance, and Root Cause Failure Analysis. The idea is to anticipate and solve problems before they become problems. Reliability Centered maintenance would begin with a study done on a piece of equipment to gain understanding of all its […]

condition monitoring| machinery diagnostics| machinery vibration| ONEPROD Hawk| predictive maintenance

By Mac MacCormack on February 21, 2017

Predictive Maintenance, also known as Condition Based Maintenance or affectionately known as “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” also has its own set of pro’s and con’s. The pro’s: Rotating equipment usually gives warning signs before failure. Vibration level or pattern changes, rise in temperature, wear detected via oil analysis, performance change, motor current […]

condition monitoring| machinery diagnostics| maintenance reliability| Preventive maintance| troubleshooting

By Mac MacCormack on February 1, 2017

Preventive Maintenance, also known as planned maintenance, scheduled maintenance, calendar based maintenance, historical maintenance, etc. has its own set of pro’s and con’s. The theory is machinery has a life cycle. The probability of failure increases as the machine ages so maintenance needs to be performed prior to failure to extend its life and avoid […]

bearing failures| condition monitoring| machinery diagnostics| realigning America

By Mac MacCormack on January 4, 2017

In the current highly competitive global economy we live in, there is always a drive to get the competitive edge. One way is to develop a maintenance strategy that will improve safety, meet production goals, increase uptime, increase plant efficiency and thus increase plant profitability. There are four basic maintenance strategies: Breakdown Maintenance Preventive Maintenance […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

condition monitoring| machinery diagnostics| machinery vibration| misalignment| soft foot

By Mac MacCormack on July 15, 2016

Although shaft distortion due to misalignment affects more than just the electric motor, here are a few things that are a telltale signs you may have an alignment issue. In a perfectly straight shaft, the centers of each shaft cross-section from end-to-end of the shaft lie on a straight line. A shaft is bent if […]

bearing failures| bearings| condition monitoring| machinery diagnostics| machinery vibration

By Stan Riddle on June 6, 2016

  In industrial machinery, the centerpiece of vibration analysis is the ability to detect bearing problems BEFORE the bearing fails.  Even more beneficial is detecting the root cause of a bearing problem before damage is done. The bearing really is the heart of the rotating machine.  There’s a plethora of bearing types and designs. There […]