Martin Sprocket and Gears: Maintenance and Troubleshooting Guide

Semiconductor devices are almost always part of a larger, more complex piece of electronic equipment. These devices operate in concert with other circuit elements and are subject to system, subsystem and environmental influences. When equipment fails in the field or on the shop floor, technicians usually begin their evaluations with the unit's smallest, most easily replaceable module or subsystem. The subsystem is then sent to a lab, where technicians troubleshoot the problem to an individual component, which is then removed--often with less-than-controlled thermal, mechanical and electrical stresses--and submitted to a laboratory for analysis. Although this isn't the optimal failure analysis path, it is generally what actually happens.

I use the term RCPE because it is a waste of good initiatives and time to only find the root cause of a problem, but not fixing it. I like to use the word problem; a more common terminology is Root Cause Failure Analysis (RCFA), instead of failure because the word failure often leads to a focus on equipment and maintenance. The word problem includes all operational, quality, speed, high costs and other losses. To eliminate problems is a joint responsibility between operations, maintenance and engineering. 

Oh "Overall Equipment Effectiveness", I've heard about that before! Unfortunately, in many facilities, that's all OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) is to the personnel. Something they heard of, talked about or read about. Many maintenance departments today still do not effectively utilize the OEE tool even though it's widely used among the world class companies.

This paper presents an overview of an integrated process for system maintenance, fault diagnosis and support. The solution is based on Qualtech System, Inc.’s (QSI’s) TEAMS toolset for integrated diagnostics and involves several key innovations. As a showcase of the integrated solution, QSI, along with Antech Systems and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), have recently completed a research project for the Information Technology Branch at the Naval Air Warfare Center–Aircraft Division (NAWC-AD) in St. Inigoes, MD. The entire system, termed ADAPTS (Adaptive Diagnostic And Personalized Technical Support), provides a comprehensive solution to integrated maintenance and training.

Contrary to popular opinion, a centrifugal pump is not designed to develop one head at a single capacity as requested by the pump purchaser. In fact a pump is designed and produced to supply a whole range of head-capacity conditions as identified on it’s performance curve. The pump will operate on that curve if it is driven at the particular speed for which the curve is drawn.

Ask for a modern centrifugal pump recommendation from your favorite supplier and chances are he will recommend one of the standard pump designs that conform to either the A.N.S.I., I.S.O. or D.I.N. specifications. On the surface that might seem like a good recommendation, but the fact is that all of these designs will cause you maintenance problems. Refer to the illustration prior to diving into the details of the obvious problems found within these designs.

It's important to find out if material flows are present or not throughout a bulk-processing facility; material cost savings and increased plant efficiency can offset an investment in monitoring. Most bulk solids processors can do this using low-cost acoustic emission-monitoring technology.