Availability in a Supply Constrained Environment is the #1 Issue for Refinery Executives

Let's suppose that we have recorded the time when each failure of a repairable subsystem has happened during a season. The arrangement of these failures (black points in Figure 1) along the time axis is called a stochastical realization of failure events.

In a properly operating bearing the race ways and rolling elements will become dull in appearance. This dullness is not an indication of wear and has no affect on the life of the bearing. These dull surfaces form the visible paths that I will be referring to in the following paragraphs, so their appearance and location is important in analyzing any type of bearing failure.

The key to minimizing motor problems is scheduled routine inspection and service. The frequency of routine service varies widely between applications.

Part 5 of 9 on Troubleshooting Mechanical Seals: Scoring - symptoms, causes, failure modes, and solutions.

It would be a virtually impossible task to try to document the cause and remedy of every possible fault that could occur on even the simplest hydraulic system. For this reason it is necessary to adopt a logical approach to troubleshooting, in order to locate a fault as quickly and accurately as possible. Down time on modern production machinery is very expensive, so an hour saved in locating a problem may make hundreds, or sometimes thousands, of pounds worth of saving in los production.

In Part II of Insider Secrets to Hydraulics, I outline a logical approach to hydraulic system troubleshooting that begins with checking and eliminating the easy things first. The benefits of this approach are clearly illustrated by a troubleshooting situation I was involved in recently.