Balancing your couplings is not essential to a great precision shaft alignment, though it is an essential part of a job well done. As part of your prealignment steps/checks, the keyways of the driver and driven machine shafts should be set 180 degrees apart from each other. This will help to correct any influence that…
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Has this ever happened to you? You’re aligning a machine and your laser alignment system or dial indicator calculations tell you to add shims under the motor feet. You do what is expected, re-measure and you still have to add shims! Wonder why? I’ve heard it before, my laser doesn’t work or you calculated wrong.…
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During a recent Fixturlaser GO Pro Training class, at a mid-west university, we performed a shaft alignment on a large Flowserve HVAC pump with a 500 HP electric motor. This motor was large enough that multiple people could work on both sides without really seeing each other. Well, that proved to be an issue with…
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During a recent training class at a new facility in Indiana, the class wanted to check alignment of a recently installed circulating pump. Their response was, “It’s brand new, so it must be aligned, right?”. To which I responded, “I’ll bet it isn’t”. Here are the alignment results as we found it. For an 1800…
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During a recent Fixturlaser XA Pro training class, at a Texas petrochemical plant, we were performing an alignment on a 25 HP, 3600 RPM electric motor & water pump. At first the class was having a little trouble bringing the alignment into the 3600 tolerance due to two separate issues. The first was severe vibration…
Read MoreOne of the issues precision shaft alignment technicians face is whether a machine is alignable. There will be times that a machine cannot be aligned in its current condition. A recent Fixturlaser GO Basic training class ran into this issue when performing alignment checks on 4 small centrifugal pumps. All pumps had 10 HP electric…
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VibrAlign’s Shaft Alignment Training is the best in the industry. We not only train maintenance personnel on how to use our tools – we teach alignment! Lots of it! We teach correcting soft foot, bolt bound problems, pipe strain, coupling problems – real world stuff. Our training staff has about one hundred combined years of…
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Soft foot is undoubtedly the number one challenge faced on an everyday basis in precision shaft alignment. The concept is simple enough; make sure the machine feet rest flat on the base. Unfortunately, it is not always so simple to solve. Before sitting down to write this, I noted there are 17 articles posted on…
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During the field alignment portion of a Fixturlaser GO Basic shaft alignment training class, we were attempting to align a 100 H.P., 3600 RPM motor to a double suction pump. Sounds easy enough! Here’s the skinny… The pump and motor were the top set in a vertical, two unit skid made of I-beams and very…
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A recent Fixturlaser GO Basic Training class performed a field alignment on a 100 HP, 3 Phase, 5600 RPM electric motor coupled to a crude oil pump in a refinery. The class decided it would be permissible to use the 3600 RPM setting in GO Basic active tolerance table, which is +/- 0.5 mils/1” angular…
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Previous blogs have discussed several different solutions for solving Base Bound & Bolt Bound conditions when preforming precision laser shaft alignment (Base/Bound Math and Solving Base/Bound Alignment Alignment Problems). Sometimes though, the solution for a Bolt Bound issue is fairly straight forward and what you need to do is right in front of your eyes…
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Most maintenance personnel understand that documenting a precision shaft alignment is a good idea, but don’t always understand how to interpret the data. Here is a quick primer on how to read a typical alignment report. This shaft alignment report happens to be from a Fixturlaser NXA Professional but all alignment reports should contain similar…
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During the OJT portion of a Fixturlaser GO Basic Training class, with the Army Corp of Engineers, the class aligned two electric motors driving large winch gearboxes on a dredging barge. These winches are used to move the barge into position during dredging operations. The class wanted to rotate both shafts to perform the alignments,…
Read MoreSometimes precision laser shaft alignment is a quick, neat, orderly maintenance task. And sometimes, it is not! Occasionally, everything that can be wrong IS wrong. While teaching a Fixturlaser Go Pro training class in Illinois, the class went into the plant for some “hands on” shaft alignment work. The machine chosen was a 25 HP…
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Stainless steel shims are now the standard for use in shimming machinery when preforming a precision laser or dial indicator shaft alignment. They are clean, corrosion resistant, flat, and most importantly, pre-cut. Their use speeds up the alignment process significantly. However, it is very important to measure the thickness of a shim before using it.…
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