Precision Troubleshooting

In my nearly 38 years of industrial maintenance, I have had the opportunity to work on high speed precision machinery. Most often this is highly automated equipment with photo eyes that determine which function needs to occur for the next sequence. After a few instances of frustration, I found that most often when a particular machine is not functioning properly, it was just a matter of the photo eyes being out of adjustment or simply “dirty”.

Which brings me to the reason for this blog. This year 3 out of 4 troubleshooting supports calls I’ve taken have been resolved by simply cleaning the aperture’s of the transmitter/detectors or also known as “sensors”.

Mr. Stan Riddle recently wrote a very good article “Help Your Laser Shaft Alignment System See!”

Here are some before and after pictures from his article.

There have been a few other articles written on this topic, so it is not an isolated incident.

Fixturlaser Laser Alignment Systems are very rugged as they are made for the industrial environment (see video) however they are a precision measuring tool and should treated as such. Do you throw dial indicators into a tool box without protecting the plunger or stem? Not if they are vital to your everyday maintenance tasks at hand!

The photo below is of a Fixturlaser EVO precision laser shaft alignment system taken at a recent training class. The EVO was less than a year old and the class attendee’s reported it did not function properly. Obviously it had not received proper care. All it took was a little clean up and the EVO worked flawlessly!

A precision measuring device should be handled as such. Therefore if you are having some issues, start with the basics of troubleshooting, “clean first”. You might find that the solution is not all that complicated.