After several years of
working in mainte-
nance, I have found
that there's no replace-
ment for proper machine alignment. In
every training course I teach for Noria,
I explain that there isn't a lubricant
that can protect against misalign-
ment. With this in mind, along with
the thousands of machines that die
every year due to improper alignment,
it's time to take the necessary steps to
further your reliability program.
When performed correctly, an
alignment can be an essential part
of a proactive maintenance plan.
e variety of methods and tools
available makes it easy to justify
investing the time to do the job
right. With that said, my first align-
ment experience involved following
an old-timer around as he showed
me the ropes. After we set the new
motor atop our hydraulic press and
cleaned out the old grease from
the grid coupling, he used a small
6-inch ruler or straight edge and
laid it across the coupling halves.
ere was some shimming of the
motor to get it parallel with the
hydraulic pump shaft, but the whole
process was "eyeballed."
Over time, what I learned from
this experience was that the drive end
of the motor ran hotter, the grease was
almost always hardened or turned to
dust, and we had to replace a broken
coupling quite often. From this prac-
tice, it's safe to assume that we were a
reactive maintenance culture, and we
were. We never questioned why the
coupling disintegrated or why the
motors kept failing.
With a change of employers
came a new culture and the desire
Consider Machine
Alignment to Avoid
Equipment Failures
There isn't a
lubricant that
can protect
against
misalignment."
"
M aintenance and Reliabilit y
BACK PAGE BASICS
Garrett Bapp
|
Noria Corporation
46
|
January - February 2018
|
www
.
machinerylubrication.com