Background The practice of dowel pinning machinery was originally conceived within the U.S. Navy, well over a century ago. This innovation was triggered by the need for a solution to the extreme conditions faced onboard naval surface vessels and submarines by directly-coupled rotating machinery with respect to hull and foundation deflection related to changing temperatures [...]

iPURCHASE, A supplement from IMPO MAGAZINE • March 2012 Companies are attempting to operate leaner and more efficiently every day, with predictive maintenance still serving as a driving force. With a variety of tools on the market, there is something for every operation, large or small. There is so much technology available to manufacturers and [...]

Smith Pump Company recently was called to a pump station to solve a problem with high vibration on three 350HP vertical turbine pumps. The pump station was fairly new and had only been in operation for a year or two. Two of the three pumps were operated on a variable frequency drive (VFD).  The first [...]

PLANT ENGINEERING • March 2012 Don’t contribute to unnecessary maintenance costs A condition monitoring analyst encounters many challenges. One of the primary ones is to determine when to report a defect finding. Should it be reported now or should reporting wait until the severity of the defect increases? How near is the problem that has been [...]

MAINTENANCE TECHNOLOGY • February 2012 So many machines. So little time. What’s the best approach? Vibration analysts are often faced with scores—perhaps hundreds—of machines, many of which exhibit vibration frequencies that are very hard (if not impossible) to identify. Some machines can absorb countless hours of an analyst’s time before he/she can confidently identify all [...]

Dial indicators are ubiquitous in shaft alignment; they have been used (and misused) extensively for alignment throughout industry for many years. In the right hands, a very accurate alignment can be performed with dial indicators. However, even under the best of circumstances, it will be a time-consuming task with many traps and pitfalls for the [...]