Recently while visiting a client’s site, we were asked for alignment advice regarding an electric motor coupled to a mixer. The customer shared that the electric motor sat upon an adjustable base plate with adjustment bolts (jack bolts) in the vertical and horizontal planes. Despite the base plate having vertical jack bolts, VibrAlign’s typical…
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Anyone involved in precision shaft alignment knows that unintentional movement is the biggest contributor to non-repeatable alignment results. Movement can come from several sources: Soft foot, loose bolts, flexible bases, excessive bearing clearances, improperly mounted or loose sensor mounting hardware, etc. One of the more elusive and least considered sources of movement is cupped washers…
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While on the road for VibrAlign ReAligning America, we trainers encounter similar issues at every facility where we conduct our Shaft Alignment Best Practices Training. During our training classes we ask the students what are some of the “pains” that they have regarding the precision shaft alignments that they have attempted in the past. The…
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A recent Fixturlaser EVO class performed an alignment check on a 35HP, 1750 RPM electric motor and chill water pump set. The initial set of alignment results indicated horrible angular misalignment (14 to 16 times tolerance) and offset misalignment (6 to 8 times tolerance) in the vertical and horizontal planes. Before making corrections, pre-alignment checks…
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The belly of your electric motor that is! During the OJT portion of a training class, at an Omaha NE client, I ran into a most extreme case of soft foot. The customer told me they had a motor/pump set that they could not align no matter what. This was a 100 HP electric motor…
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Any aligner knows that not properly correcting soft foot during a precision shaft alignment leads to frustration and anguish, not to mention wasted time. Soft foot is such a problem there has been numerous articles on The Alignment Blog the past few years about the subject. The articles discuss the many causes of soft foot…
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Recently a customer contacted us about increased vibration on a motor, due to a broken washer. And they wanted to know if there was a specification for washer hardness, and a guide for bolt size to washer size. There are many standards for bolting (USS, SAE, ASME, etc.), of which, washers are an important part. …
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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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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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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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Our service group received a call from a water treatment plant in the western US for assistance to align a gearbox with C-face motor to a rotary lobe pump. After numerous failed attempts and multiple hours of frustration they had determined the gearbox to be Bolt Bound. We were asked to bring turned down bolts and…
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Some companies have a policy of torquing motor hold down bolts to set prescribed value. While this may be a regulation in some industries, or required on specific types of machines, it really has little to do with the quality, accuracy or repeatability of shaft alignment–if the alignment is done properly. Most millwrights may disagree. This is…
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Today’s maintenance personnel are tasked to do more in less time so production can resume as soon as possible. As such, aligners of rotating machinery may believe they are saving time by eliminating some steps of the shaft alignment process when in reality the opposite is true. An alignment check was performed on a process…
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In mechanical trades, most of us have been taught that most installed machines must be installed level and the bases must be flat. But contrary to what many of us think, level and flat are two completely different terms. Level simply means that the machine is parallel to earth, or horizontal. Flat means that the…
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Back around 1982, when I made my first forays from machinist into mechanical maintenance, I remember hearing about coupling alignment while working at a now-defunct rope factory in North Carolina. I considered myself a decent machinist, although I had little experience beyond technical school. I remember a welder showing me how to align shafts. “Straight…
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