Do you use accurate alarm values for your vibration analysis program or other CM technologies?   Setting accurate alarm values will help you identify equipment defects occurring in your equipment.  However, the benefits go beyond this.   Missing alarms or inaccurate alarms may force your analyst to review every machine each time data is collected.  This wastes [...]

Many of you watch or at least are familiar with the various Crime Scene Investigation (CSI ) television series where advanced forensic techniques are utilized to catch the criminals or “bad actors”.  When it comes to your “bad actors” from an equipment perspective, where is your CSI unit? What is your forensic approach to equipment [...]

When experiencing lack of repeatability using a laser system, check the components for looseness: Brackets: Make sure that they are rigidly attached to the shafts (or solid coupling hubs). The surface imperfection where the brackets are mounted plays no role provided the shafts are rotated and the bracket is firmly attached to the surface. Risers: [...]

Fault frequencies are very important in vibration analysis, because they allow the analyst to correlate vibration data to specific components in the equipment that may be in some stage of failure (equipment faults). Fault frequencies change with any adjustment in the speed of the equipment being monitored. Most modern vibration data collectors and software will automatically [...]

When aligning a vertical flange-mounted machine, it can be helpful to tweak the flange configuration in your laser alignment system to take advantage of different shimming alternatives. For instance, if the OD of the flange is larger than the diameter of the mounting bolt circle, a good laser system will compensate for this by taking [...]

Unbalance occurs when the rotor’s mass is no longer at the center of rotation.  Unbalance can be caused by many factors: Assembly error Machine tolerances Eccentric components Wear Corrosion Thermal distortion Mechanical distortion Material buildup Bent components Broken components Many things can prevent the successful correction of unbalance.  Equipment resonance, bearing issues, product buildup and [...]