Implementation of Condition Based Maintenance (CBM) on ships

Bearing race measurement following crankshaft bearing damage - BORALIGN^®

Condition Monitoring – always a painful experience? VIBCODE^®

Wallpaper manufacturer is saving US$10,500 per day...

SILVER MRO SOLUTION AWARD
by Plant Services Magazine and MRO Marketplace, August 2001

Erfurt & Sohn, one the biggest wallpaper manufacturers in Europe, is saving approximately US$10,500 per day using a new compact technology for non-contact measurement of speed and length. Designed for production lines, it employs ordinary white light. The speed of any moving material can be measured accurately (within 0.05%) up to 3,000 m/min, with an acquisition time of only 2 milliseconds. This has enabled savings through accurate length control of the product and ultrafast deployment of webcatchers which suck in paper the instant it tears, preventing costly damage to paper machines or printing presses. In the steel industry, speed of flying shears is precisely controlled to cut bar stock in motion, with reduced wear on blades. Shiny, slippery, or fragile surfaces present problems for mechanical encoders or lasers, but not for the VLM 200, whose white light system employs a CCD sensor which converts the movement of material into an electrical frequency that is exactly proportional to the speed. Waterproof and shockproof, it is ideal for high dynamic applications like blow forging presses where velocity is used to calculate accumulated kinetic energy. VLM 200 precisely controls speed of rotary shears in slitting lines, length of strip, and coil diameter. Perhaps the greatest benefits come in ultra-precise thickness control through the modern mass-flow control principle, utilizing the ratio of entry and exit velocities in a rolling mill. These applications will save customers such as Krupp Thyssen Nirosta and Alcan millions of dollars through higher quality, increased production speed and lowered downtime.

—Alan Luedeking

Sugar mill will save US$204,672 in downtime costs...

SILVER MRO SOLUTION AWARD
by Plant Services Magazine and MRO Marketplace, February 2000

A sugar mill saved $2,400 per hour downtime with our DOTLINE LASER^® Pulley Alignment Tool by reducing the time to align a 10-belt drive on a sugar pulp press from 6 hours to 40 minutes. With 16 presses in the mill, annual savings (excluding labor) are projected at $204,672. This was accomplished by eliminating the labor intensive string and straightedge methods that required at least two people and numerous repositioning moves. This left more time for the pre-alignment tasks of checking for pulley runout, eccentricity, and bent shafts. After alignment, final belt tensioning was accomplished without compromising the alignment since control over all positioning parameters was continuously maintained. The DOTLINE Laser allows instant visual verification of offset, twist angle and axial angle in any V-belt drive system, by projecting a permanently calibrated laser fan line onto targets magnetically attached on the other pulley. Precision pulley alignment and 2-dimensional laser leveling are combined in one tool. DOTLINE Laser mounts magnetically to the face of any steel sheave having a 2.5" minimum diameter. It fits on single and multiple belt drives. DOTLINE Laser makes pulley alignment possible to a higher accuracy in less than one quarter the time needed for traditional methods and reduces wear, noise and vibration.

—Alan Luedeking

SILVER MRO SOLUTION AWARD
by Plant Services Magazine and MRO Marketplace, February 1999

My customer, a Central Florida Municipal Utility, reduced its Plant's Unit 2 180 MW GE turbine outage duration by 2 days thereby saving an estimated $162,000 in replacement power costs and assuring the on-time start of their next planned turbine outage. This was the immediate result of shortening the "critical path" activity of final aligning their two turbine rotor couplings located between the high pressure, low pressure, and main generator sections. Their operational cost savings were made possible using two products called the Hutter Turning Pin^® and the ROTALIGN^® PRO laser shaft alignment system.

The patent pending Hutter Turning Pin^® greatly increased the speed of the alignment by allowing both coupling flange halves to be rotated together without pin binding. It also enabled the two individual couplings to be aligned simultaneously. Unlike previous pins which require each section of the turbine to be rotated individually, the new pin has a quick-disconnect feature which allows the entire train to be rotated and aligned at the same time.

The ROTALIGN PRO laser alignment system cut the measurement time at each coupling by 50% compared to the previous method of taking 16 point rim and face dial readings. The improved accuracy of the ROTALIGN PRO laser also minimized the number of subsequent bearing alignment corrections required.

—Ed Hutter, P.E