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Maintenance Strategies: Part One

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…

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MACHINERY VIBRATION PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS, PART 6 – RESONANCE

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…

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VibrAlign announces the HAWK Pump Challenge

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…

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MACHINERY VIBRATION PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS, PART 5, MECHANICAL LOOSENESS

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…

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Alignment and Vibration: What is the correlation?

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…

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Shaft Distortion and Electric Motors

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…

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Low Cost Thermal Diagnoses Misalignment Machinery Health

With the availability and decreasing prices of technology to help diagnose rotating machinery health, machine failure should be a diminishing concern. Thermal imaging cameras can be expensive; however, these cameras have very detailed diagnostic abilities and high resolution. Reduced cost Thermal Imaging has recently become available through various sources. I recently purchased an infrared camera…

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MACHINERY VIBRATION PROBLEMS – PART 4 BEARINGS

  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…

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MACHINERY VIBRATION PROBLEMS Part 3-Lubrication

LUBRICATION Lubrication is sometimes incorrectly thought of as a job for unskilled workers, apprentices, or operators.  When I hear a maintenance person say, “I’m just an oiler”, I cringe a bit. Proper lubrication methods, formulations, quantities, and procedures are essential to machine reliability. A machine can no more do without lubrication than it can do…

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The Three T’s

I have been in industrial maintenance longer than I have not. A portion of that time was spent in Maintenance Management. One lesson I learned was, that in order for a team leader (or company as a whole) to be successful, the entire team needs to be successful. I tend to simplify things, maybe to…

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What about the other 75-80% of your rotating machinery?

In today’s lean manufacturing, RCM (Reliability Centered Maintenance) is becoming more prevalent. Condition Monitoring is a big part of RCM. However, continuous monitoring is typically only done on “critical” equipment which amounts to approximately 20-25% of the equipment. The other 75-80% might get picked up during vibration rounds, which will then have to be analyzed,…

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