Preventative Maintenance

A failed bearing is usually treated as a maintenance event. Remove it. Install a replacement. Put the machine back into production. But a bearing can provide valuable information about the condition of the equipment around it. The damage pattern on the bearing may help identify the actual mechanism that caused the failure. That makes bearing failure analysis a useful tool for improving equipment reliability. Don't Throw Away the Evidence Before disposing of a failed bearing,

When a machine goes down, the first number most companies look at is the repair invoice. A replacement bearing might cost a few hundred dollars. A new gearbox might cost several thousand. Those are easy numbers to calculate. The real cost of downtime is everything that happens while the machine isn't producing. Downtime Ripples Through the Entire Plant Manufacturing systems are connected. When one machine stops, the effects spread quickly. Operators stand idle. Upstream produ

If you've spent any time around manufacturing, you've probably heard someone say, "We need to move to predictive maintenance." It's become one of the industry's favorite buzzwords. The implication is that preventive maintenance is outdated and predictive technologies—vibration analysis, thermal imaging, oil analysis, and machine monitoring—are the future. The truth is a little more practical. In most facilities, the best maintenance strategy isn't choosing one over the other.