One of the hallmarks of a good maintenance technician is the ability to troubleshoot – not just using vibration tools, or volt meters, or laptops with Ethernet plug-ins, but the ability to troubleshoot machinery in their minds. In other words, the ability to visualize what the problem might be. “Fix the easy things first” is…
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Bearing defect factor is a culmination of two technologies used for shock detection. DEF is designed as an indicator for bearing defect detection, but can also be valuable in the detection of gear defects. Why is DEF significant? In the following data set are displayed Overall Vibration Velocity, Overall Acceleration, and Defect Factor. The Overall…
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A customer was experiencing high levels of vibration on one of the HVAC motors. The cause for these high vibration levels was determined to be resonance. Resonance of this motor was seen in the vibration spectral data and was confirmed onsite with a bump test. This motor was not VFD driven and therefore the machine…
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A vibration sensor (or accelerometer) measures vibration-simple, right? But how and where you mount the sensor is CRITICAL to getting good information. Here are some good tips to keep in mind. 1. Mount the sensor as close to the bearing location as you can safely do it. These sensors can measure vibration anywhere on the…
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Most people who work on, or around pumps are familiar with the term “cavitation”. It is often used as a catch all phrase for any flow-related vibration on pumps, and is often reported by vibration analysts when: Pump noise level is high, Pump vibration is erratic, with lots of “noise” in the spectrum. But there…
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Gearboxes are common in industry. They are used to increase or decrease speed from the driver, provide increased torque, and change direction of power transmission. There are two main types of commonly-used gearboxes: GEARBOX TYPE Parallel or Standard Gearbox-one where the input and output shafts are parallel. Bevel or Right Angle Gearbox-one where…
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Knowing the correct shaft speed of both shafts on a belt-driven machine is important when performing machinery diagnostics. Ideally you would do this by first identifying the input and output speeds using a strobe light, photo tach or laser tach. Once you know the accurate speed of both components, use this formula to determine the…
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Predictive Maintenance, also known as Condition Based Maintenance or affectionately known as “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” also has its own set of pro’s and con’s. The pro’s: Rotating equipment usually gives warning signs before failure. Vibration level or pattern changes, rise in temperature, wear detected via oil analysis, performance change, motor current…
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So you received your new OneProd HAWK Supervisor or HAWK Supervisor with Balancing. There are some steps to follow to insure your instrument is configured correctly. Nest Set-up: You will need to make sure you are using only Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 (or higher) for the first connection and you will need to download MS…
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As a Millwright, Service Technician or any type of field or in-house Mechanic, we understand there is one main goal that we have in common, which is to keep the equipment running. This includes repairing and minimizing downtime in the event of an unpredicted failure or breakdown. Although it’s important to make repairs and perform…
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Resonance is when a force causes an object to “resonate”, due to excitation of its natural frequency. Think of a machine coasting down to a stop. There are certain speeds in coasting down that excite natural frequencies of the machine components. This is often observed in the coast down of a bench grinder. As the…
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As my grandma used to say, “When you don’t know how to use your head, you’d better know how to use your legs”. Thanks to a feature on our FALCON data collector I didn’t have to call her to tell her how right she was (again)! Two of us were performing data collection on a…
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Mechanical looseness is a very common machine vibration diagnosis. It is often overused-becoming a “catch all” category for undiagnosed vibration. It can be caused by a multitude of things that may seem to have no relationship to each other, such as: Loose bolting Coupling looseness or backlash Belts Too Loose Cracked welds Improper bearing…
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This is a subject that comes up relatively frequently with our customers and observations from the field. The purpose of today’s blog post is to illustrate what can and often does happen. While misalignment can and does present with easily identifiable vibration signals; often it does not. Misalignment may be present in a machine, developing…
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Although shaft distortion due to misalignment affects more than just the electric motor, here are a few things that are a telltale signs you may have an alignment issue. In a perfectly straight shaft, the centers of each shaft cross-section from end-to-end of the shaft lie on a straight line. A shaft is bent if…
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If you’re working to maintain machines, Acoem USA wants to help.
We’re committed to providing tools, training, and services that will transform your approach to maintenance and reliability.
