Visual inspections of equipment should always be completed during vibration data collection or the collection of any type of condition monitoring (CM) data. This important function is often overlooked and valuable information on the condition of your equipment is lost.

Looseness and many other conditions are commonly found as a result of a vibration analysis program. The source of these conditions should be corrected to improve the equipment’s reliability. Visual inspections can easily be completed on the machine while the data collector is acquiring the data. The visual inspection may reveal the source of these equipment issues. This will save time because future efforts will not be required to determine the cause of the issue.

Visual inspections may provide a confirmation to the analyst of the problem(s) uncovered by the vibration analysis program or other CM technology. It is important to diagnose and confirm problems to ensure accuracy in your CM efforts. Visual inspections may often provide the confirmation opportunity needed.

Safety issues are often uncovered by these routine visual inspections and can be corrected before an employee is injured. This could save a life and the resulting return on the investment is priceless!