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Disclaimer: The author is not trying to present himself as an authority on all available CM standards. This blog post is simply an attempt to help those who may be unaware that such guidance exists or of the extent of such standards. Are you looking for some guidance on a well-designed approach to condition monitoring […]

When performing shaft alignment, the best way to accomplish the horizontal (side-to-side) corrections is using jack bolts. You do not want to hit your machines with a hammer in order to move them. Always remember to back off the jack bolts on the opposite side. Remember that once you are done with your side-to-side correction, […]

Belt driven machines are the Rodney Dangerfield of the maintenance industry – “they don’t get no respect!” For example, look at the image below. Belt driven machines do need a little bit more TLC than they currently get. I want to show you two innovations that will greatly improve your maintenance efforts on these highly […]

We previously discussed in our series of soft foot, Types of Soft Foot: Part 2 Bent Foot. In this follow-up blog, we will discuss Squishy Foot. What is squishy foot? Squishy foot: also known as spring foot, occurs when the gap between the foot and base has already been filled with an excess of shims […]

A few things that should always be inspected during belt PM’s are: Inspect grooves for V-belts for wear using a sheave gauge following supplier recommendations. Rusted or pitted sheaves should be replaced. Otherwise, belt damage/wear and premature failure can easily result. Shiny grooves should not be overlooked and can indicate heavy wear. Corrosion on the […]

When it comes to condition-based monitoring, no matter how hard you try, you can never have 100% failure protection. At some point and on some level—even at the smallest levels—something is going to go wrong and your assets are going to fail. The best choice is to always plan for those sudden failures to minimize […]

A pump housing must be installed so that the surface is flat and level to the required installation tolerances. Doing so requires great precision and ideally the task would be easy to accomplish. In the application below, the user needed to perform such a measurement.  This task was usually reserved for a separate crew that […]

From a reliability perspective, commissioning a machine requires precision shaft alignment to the correct tolerances and proper documentation. Ideally, these alignments should be performed using a laser system with built-in ANSI alignment tolerances such as the Easy-Laser XT770 and with the ability to generate a detailed graph report of the alignment, both as found and […]

We previously discussed types of soft foot in Types of Soft Foot: Part 1 Parallel Air Gap. In this follow-up blog, we will discuss Bent Foot. What is Bent Foot? Bent foot: Occurs when a foot of the machine is deflected or in an angle with regard to the base. However, this also applies to […]

The automotive industry has had a bout with torque related issues recently. This has included over and under torqued items that have lead to failures and even deaths. We see torque related issues constantly in manufacturing facility root cause analysis. Bearing with reduced clearances, life due to over tightening of the housings, loose components due […]

When it comes to condition-based monitoring, no matter how hard you try, you can never have 100% failure protection. At some point and on some level—even at the smallest levels—something is going to go wrong and your assets are going to fail. The best choice is to always plan for those sudden failures to minimize […]

The Easy-Laser E970 alignment system makes roll parallel alignment accurate and easy to accomplish.  This application requires that the rolls be parallel to each other in term of skew and level.  In addition, and very important to the application, is to make sure the slitters and guides are aligned to each other axially on the […]

What is soft foot? Soft foot is a common term used for machine frame distortion. The distortion is caused when one or more foot of a machine differ in height from the others. Soft foot can be frustrating and bad for the health of rotating machinery and the sanity of the technician performing the alignment. […]

When a failure occurs, one of two things happen: A Failure Analysis program kicks in to figure out what truly caused the failure in order to eliminate the condition that caused that specific failure. Or… The easiest thing to see gets blamed. That “blame game” can be influenced by factors that have nothing to do […]

Marine propulsion alignment consists of ensuring that all bearings and rotational centerlines are set into a straight line as per the installation requirements. Depending on the vessel size, this means the machine, gearbox, clutch, support bearings, stern tube and struts should all make a straight line when the vessel is at sea. Proper propulsion alignment […]

MAY 2020 – TRANSFORMER TECHNOLOGY  The term “Electrical Asset” casts a large net over an important class of systems. Whether it be substations, transmission and distribution lines, transformers, or motor circuit control cabinets, electrical assets play a key role in practically everything we do. Like most things we take them for granted until they fail […]

I recently participated in an alignment check done on a fracking rig. The misalignment between the diesel engine and the gearbox causes excessive vibration and damage to the u-joint. The goal for this particular alignment was parallelism between the gearbox and the engine. The Challenges: The offset between the gearbox and engine was a little […]

Motion Amplification is a camera-based full-field vibration technology that turns every pixel in the camera into a displacement sensor enabling you to see and visualize motion across the entire video. This opens up opportunities in visualizing an asset or system holistically instead of location by location often revealing information that would otherwise remain hidden. By […]

The importance of having two temperature probes is to continuously monitor both the temperature of the inner and outer bearing races throughout the entire warming process of a bearing. By doing this you mitigate possible workpiece damage due to stresses caused by the temperature differential between the ID and OD. Most induction heaters only monitor […]

To resume our “The Rights of” blog post series which included The Rights of Precision Balancing and The Rights for Precision Shaft Alignment, I decided to give compressed air leak detection and repair a try with some basic rights when using PdM technologies like Airborne Ultrasound and Acoustic Imaging. Here are my 14 rights to […]