Shock Factor and SFI

For years, vibration analysts have depended upon the ISO Vibration Severity Chart for the determination of machinery health.  Typically, this chart provides a level of certainty that would allow the analyst to look at the vibration levels, and if acceptable, move onto the next machine for analysis.   Some defects are determined in the waveform…

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Fix the Easy Things First!

One of the hallmarks of a good maintenance technician is the ability to troubleshoot – not just using vibration tools, or volt meters, or laptops with Ethernet plug-ins, but the ability to troubleshoot machinery in their minds.  In other words, the ability to visualize what the problem might be. “Fix the easy things first” is…

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Fire Pump Maintenance

Fire Pumps are a critical safety item in facilities across the world. Their purpose is to make sure a building has enough water pressure in case of a fire emergency. Of course, the hope is that they are never needed but if they are they need to perform reliably. Fire Pumps are typically tested on…

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TROUBLESHOOTING MOTOR UNBALANCE

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…

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Setting Up a Motor-Gearbox for Vibration Measurement

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…

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Calculating Output Speed Using Pulley Diameters and Input Speed

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…

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Maintenance Strategies: Part Four – Proactive Maintenance

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…

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Maintenance Strategies, Part Three – Predictive Maintenance

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…

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So You Got Your New HAWK! Let’s Set it Up.

So you received your new OneProd HAWK Supervisor or HAWK Supervisor with Balancing.  There are some steps to follow to insure your instrument is configured correctly. Nest Set-up:  You will need to make sure you are using only Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 (or higher) for the first connection and you will need to download MS…

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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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Three Major Contributors to Equipment Failure

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…

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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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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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