MARTS 2012
Maintenance and Reliability Technology Summit designed for plant and facility managers, maintenance leaders and crew members, reliability engineers, industrial technicians and all other capacity-assurance professionals.
Booth# 10
March 13-14, 2012
Rosemont, IL
Register now!

While there, don’t miss our presentations:

• Balancing Theory and Field Balancing Tips
  March 13, Room D – 11:00 am – 12 noon
  Presenter: Alex Nino
• Go Lean And Green: Align The Machine
  March 14, Room C – 9:50 am – 10:50 am
  Presenter: David Jackson

NFMT 2012 
The #1 Conference and Trade Show for Facilities Professionals.
Booth# 2582
March 13-15, 2012
Baltimore, MD
All Access Pass, a $1,095 value. Register now! Use priority code EXIN.

DESIGN & MANUFACTURING TEXAS
Perfect place to be whether you are looking for new products, need updates on the latest technologies or simply would like to talk to suppliers face-to-face.
Booth# 1017
March 14-15, 2012
Fort Worth, TX
Save $45! Register for FREE Admission Online using Promo Code BB.

CENTRAL VALLEY FACILITIES EXPO
Attend and learn how to save energy, reduce downtime, comply with regulations, and improve your managerial skills.
Booth# 507
March 14-15, 2012
Modesto, CA
Download FREE Admission Pass

• Join us Thursday, March 15 – 9:25 a.m. – 10:25 a.m. for The Basics of Field Balancing by Paul Howard. One of the most common causes of damaging vibration is a machine that is out of balance. Often field balancing can be employed to correct this potentially damaging and hazardous condition. This session will teach you the basic theory of balancing. The speaker will use rotor and field balancing equipment to perform an in-class balance.

NORTHWEST FACILITIES EXPO
Discover Solutions to your Facilities’ Challenges
Booth# 301
March 28-29, 2012
Portland, OR
Download FREE Admission Pass

• Join us Thursday, March 29 – 10:50 a.m. – 11:50 a.m. for Maintaining Belt Drives by Roy Loop. This pulley alignment presentation explores most aspects of good belt-drive maintenance. Different methods of aligning sheaves will be discussed, including laser alignment procedures also applicable to sprocket chain drives. Belt failure analysis, pulley alignment procedures, and belt tensioning methods will be reviewed. Proper belt handling, maintenance and safety concerns also will be addressed.

WHERE: Hyatt Regency O’Hare in Rosemont, IL

Attend our Presentations:

Tuesday, March 13, 2012 at 11 am – 12 noon, Room D
“Balancing Theory and Field Balancing Tips” by Alex Nino, Application Engineer, LUDECA, Inc.

Balancing is one of the cornerstones of maintaining smooth running machinery.  Often considered confusing and difficult, field balancing is actually quite straight-forward.  This session will help you understand how field balancing works in practical, easy to understand terms.  It will also cover common problems often encountered when field balancing and tips for getting the job done.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012 at 9:50 am – 10:50 am, Room C
“Go Lean And Green: Align The Machine”  by David Jackson, Heartland Industrial Solutions

This presentation will cover the green benefits and importance of precision machine alignment and how it can benefit in four areas: energy savings, improved machine life, better products and less pollution —all of which are essential towards achieving plant reliability and efficiency while “Going Green”. It will point out how having sound operating practices and well-developed procedures in place while adhering to guidelines where machines are precision-aligned and evaluated with vibration testing when they are installed—or anytime that they are unbolted for maintenance— should be a priority to operate “lean and green” facilities.

Ready to attend? Register now!

Vibration analysis and condition monitoring are part of a bigger picture.

Reducing maintenance cost, reducing production cost, improving uptime, reducing risk, improving safety, and improving product quality are some of the essential drivers for deploying vibration analysis and other predictive maintenance tools. They should be goals of any plant or corporation.

Vibration analysis and condition monitoring (CM) are important ingredients in all of these goals. Vibration analysis, if applied correctly, can provide identification of specific problems that routinely prevent these goals from being achieved. Furthermore, vibration analysis can be used as part of root cause analysis efforts within a facility. It is very important to identify what is causing specific problems to routinely occur and eliminate those causes.

Many considerations should be taken before and during the implementation of a vibration analysis program or any other CM technology. Some of them are commonly overlooked, but the best way to avoid obstacles that limit the success of vibration analysis and predictive maintenance programs is to take these 11 steps. Read my entire article “11 steps to ensure PdM success”.

• 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: Most brackets systems will have risers (support posts) attached to them to mount components. Make sure they are firmly attached to the brackets.
• Lasers, Receivers, Prism: Also make sure they are firmly attached to the risers.
• Brackets rubbing: the brackets and everything they support must not touch or rub on any stationary part during rotation.

Looking out for these simple little things can save you many headaches during your alignment job.

Winners are selected by a vote of qualified Plant Engineering subscribers – the engineers who buy, specify and use these products on a daily basis. They are the most qualified people you can find to understand how new products reduce energy costs, ensure safety and improve productivity on the manufacturing plant floor. That’s why the Plant Engineering Product of the Year award is so highly regarded in our industry. —Bob Vavra, Editor of Plant Engineering magazine

The Product of the Year awards will be presented at the 2012 Awards Dinner, presented by Plant Engineering and Control Engineering, to be held next March in Chicago, Illinois.

LEVALIGN EXPERT is manufactured by PRÜFTECHNIK Alignment Systems.

ENERGY-TECH • January 2012

At a power generating station in Florida, a severe electrical fault caused such extensive damage to a 40 MW gas turbine-driven generator that a complete replacement of the generator stator was required. An on-site spare generator core was available, but needed the faulted generator’s bearing support brackets to be installed to make it complete. As this combination of bearing support brackets and generator frame would be considered a “mismatch”, it was decided that the position of the bearing supports should be verified to ensure proper centralization of the generator’s field (rotor) relative to the generator core.

The primary objective was to accurately determine the centerline position of the generator core and position the bearing support brackets so that an equal radial air gap between the rotor body and core laminations would be obtained during generator operation.

Exact positioning of the support brackets was accomplished using specialized tooling such as the CENTRALIGN ULTRA laser bore measurement kit and the ROTALIGN ULTRA laser tool from LUDECA.

Read entire article Internal component alignment of 40 MW A.C. generator by our customer Chuck Hildebrand, Dynamic Balancing Company.