Reliable Plant, August 2010

Ah, to be able to predict the winning numbers in a lottery – who hasn’t had that dream! Life would be so easy and carefree with a crystal ball. And, would not your maintenance job be so much simpler if you could just identify machine damage in time and predict the point at which repairs really become necessary? According to DIN 31051, condition-oriented maintenance is not limited to inspection, servicing, determination of the machine condition, and maintenance schedule. It also encompasses predicting the length of service life remaining for machines and systems. This means it is not always necessary to replace a rolling bearing when an inspection measurement reveals inner raceway frequencies. This article describes how it was possible to keep a damaged bearing running for several months until the scheduled annual outage came around – naturally under close observation. Periodic measurements had shown that there had only been a slight change in the envelope spectrum. But one thing at a time …

Read the entire article Vibration analysis is like winning the lottery