Predictive maintenance (PdM) techniques are commonly used on motors and drives. But how often is the power to the equipment inspected? Adding basic power quality measurements to equipment maintenance procedures can head off unexpected failures in both the equipment and the power system.

Predictive maintenance helps Calpine reduce forced outages and cut MRO costs. The challenge for energy producers to supply continuous, uninterrupted power to customers is constant. Forced outages, which usually occur because of unexpected component failures or systemic problems, can prove costly to the power supplier and undermine its effort to attract and maintain satisfied customers.

At the installation of a new 150 gal/min centrifugal pump driven by a 125 HP motor, high vibration levels were found immediately upon first start. After several days of alignment checks, pump teardowns, bearing inspections, motor uncoupled runs and vendor technical support, no solution was found. The plant maintenance manager asked the company’s vibration analyst to take readings to troubleshoot the problem. After measuring extremely high vibration levels, resonance was suspected and was found at the motor support structure due to inadequate mounting design for the new installation.

There are three major types of tools for finding bearing defects using vibration techniques. Which of the tools should you chose for inspections of bearings? The best solution is often a combination of two or three of the tools, but it depends very much on how much rotating equipment you have in your plant, the criticality of that equipment, the speed of your rotating equipment, and how perceptive your organization is to training. A short description of the three techniques follows.

A number of changes are occurring in the Condition Based Maintenance (CBM) market and in the realm of communications, Internet and database technologies that are resulting in the adoption of Internet based monitoring programs. The following paper will describe the technologies involved as well as the current market climate that is driving this change. This paper will focus on vibration analysis in particular, however, the forces involved are just as applicable to other CBM technologies and Maintenance planning packages.

Examples of failure analysis are almost everywhere. Reduced wear and failure of machine components are a common occurrence, whether it is a minor maintenance failure or a disaster of national significance, anyone can learn from analyzing mistakes.