As Published by Maintworld March 2018 issue
CRISTAL UNION (CU) is an agroprocessing cooperative company ranking among the top European sugar and alcohol producers.
Most of its facilities are established in France (18 sites). The BOURDON site in AULNAT (in the Puy-de-Dôme département) has a production capacity of 4,500 tons of beets per day.
The company contacted SDT Ultrasound Solutions regarding the implementation of a preventive maintenance program based on the collection and analysis of ultrasonic signals. This project dealt with about 400 rotating machines.
Background
After purchasing an SDT270 ultrasonic data collector and its analysis software tool, SDT and CU have defined the outline of a training program suited to the monitoring of rotating machines. The first step consisted in creating a database containing all 300 machines and then, performing the first data collection in order to determine the initial mechanical condition of each bearing. After simple on-site analysis (ultrasonic listening) and more detailed analysis (overall or static measurements and spectral or dynamic measurements), 1 800 thresholds were defined (pre-alarm, alarm and danger).
Using these background data, technicians were then able to identify, at a glance, the machines having an alarm condition.
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Ultrasound by Benoit Degraeve