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Do your analysts use consistent phrases or statements when creating condition monitoring (CM) work orders?  It is very important to convey concise and accurate information with each CM work order. Often times misspelled words,  inaccurate information, or incomplete maintenance steps are included in work orders. A best practice is to determine the most common findings […]

WATERWORLD • September 2012 The water treatment facility in the City of Fairfield,  Ohio,  uses vibration analysis as part of its condition-monitoring planned/predictive maintenance program to help verify and assure equipment is operating satisfactorily. The Water Treatment Plant processes an average 5.1 mgd for a population of 44,000 people with a customer base of approximately […]

When dealing with a gearbox that has 3 feet,  there are two possibilities: a) If the feet are located under the shaft and bearing housings,  view the gearbox as a normal 4-foot machine. This will give you inboard and outboard corrections for the feet. The end that has the 2 feet should be corrected evenly, […]

In any alignment situation,  one of the most basic principles is rise over run. Think of it as a change in offset over a distance. It is also a way to quantify angles without using degrees. When the laser system measures “angularity”, it expresses it as rise over run, or a change in offset over […]

Many facilities have placed overall vibration data collection devices in the hands of their operators.  The goal is to give the operators and production a tool to help identify equipment problems and the severity of those problems. The intent of this effort is very good.  However,  the true value of this effort is usually not […]

Many plants have routine morning and weekly meetings to discuss equipment issues or upcoming repairs that could affect production or maintenance activities in the facility.  Are your condition monitoring (CM) and reliability efforts represented in these meetings?  Failure to have representation of your CM and reliability efforts in these meetings means that important information will […]

In my spare time,  I enjoy the hobbies of building bicycles and metalworking.  There is something about making things from scratch that satisfies both the kid and engineer in me. I recently sold a hobby class CNC machine that I purchased about a year ago.  It was a capable machine for what it did and […]