Machinery Lubrication magazine published by Noria Corporation
Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1449093
www.machinerylubrication.com | January - February 2022 | 13 ML ML immediately, to extend the failing compressor's life sufficiently to reach the next planned shutdown. e final strategy included high-efficiency depth filtration and an oil bleed and feed, as well as regular condition monitoring to track the machine's failure progress. Filtering the oil did buy us some time, and adding fresh oil helped us to operate the air compressor for the eight weeks the teams needed to reach the planned shutdown, at which point we overhauled the machine and replaced the damaged air end bearings. Failure is Your Best Teacher I was raised in an engineering family. My father was one of the very first technology leaders to begin teaching people about vibration analyzers in 1989 in Cairo by selling them and training his customers. He taught me early in my life that my failures were even more important than my successes. I remember that after I returned home from a math test with some mistakes, he told me that it didn't matter what I did right. What mattered was the mistakes I made, because those were the things I didn't know and needed to learn. ose mistakes were my room to grow and my opportunity to evolve. Now What? After a failure, it's very important to inspect the damaged parts. is is a step many reliability engineers forget to do. Even worse, some consciously ignore it. Failed parts provide a wealth of information about what happened, and if they're not examined it's pretty likely that soon you'll start building a collection of similar failures to display on your office shelf. e pictures to the left show the following: 1. Image 1: e small pitting visible here are the type of marks that prove that contamination is present. 2. Image 2: e heavily pitted area on the inner race shows where the contamination developed deep spalls and began to form a fracture network. is eventually developed into a complete fracture through the part to the outer race. 3. Image 3: there for the rollers…. e case study we've looked at helps us draw several conclusions. Early on, we established the importance of designing your mainte- nance program on a solid foundation of accurate reliability data. We also learned that CM is one of the best tools we can use when striving for effective asset management. Having a timely and accurate understanding of your machine operation and failure modes is the best way to determine the correct combination of activities (PM, CBM, inspection tasks, etc.) that conforms to the apex of the P-F curve and helps us reach a tangible machine life extension. Above all, we learned that proper training is the single most important investment we can make in our team. Training encourages educated observations and decisions, as well as promoting the culture changes needed to enable your teams' work in the plant. Training is your plant's golden parachute, giving you the ability to plan for and maneuver around costly failures you used to just endure. In short, a well-educated, enabled, and organized team with a proper reliability culture will save a lot of unnecessary costs. ML