Common causes of premature bearing wear and failure include poor bearing choices for the task at hand, incorrect mounting, misalignment, contamination and irregular lubrication leading to vibration and fatigue.
Visible early warning signs of wear or failure occurring or about to occur include excessive noise, increasing vibration, increased temperature and damage on the bearing surface.
The costs of premature wear and failure – and of not acting to monitor and prevent it – can be very high, including physical hazards to people charged with rectifying the damage entailed in urgent unplanned repairs and maintenance, often in confined spaces.
The high financial costs of unexpected maintenance or performance failure flow through into production delays, downtime, missed deliveries and budgetary and reputational impact, if predictable problems are not pre-empted in the wide spectrum of rotating machinery involved.
Such rotating machinery encompasses virtually everything vital to production processes, including pumps, motors, drives, fans, heating and cooling equipment, materials and fluid handling plant, conveyor and packaging lines, which are used in industries spanning manufacturing, food and beverage and other activities, such as electronics, where cleanliness is crucial.
When one of these vital links in the production chain breaks down, this primary failure can also lead to secondary damage to other equipment further upstream and downstream in the process.
Failures and damage can multiply, in the worst cases leading to environmental damage, such as oil leaks, chemical spills, plus land and water fouling requiring costly remediation.
“The issue is very broad in Australia and New Zealand because of the huge spectrum of rotating machinery involved at the core of manufacturing and processing,” said PUSCO Manager, Jasper Zhang
“Foreseeable problems arise because of poor product quality and unsuitable product selection in the first place.”
PUSCO is not only a champion of cost- efficient high-quality technology, but one of the very few, if any, global companies in Australasia to back its product and technology with dedicated specifying and technical services in house.
“No matter how high the quality of the product specified, however, all mechanical products can eventually wear out,” said Jasper zhang.
“So monitoring, predicting and controlling situations in which wear can occur is crucial in terms of pre-empting damage.”
This pre-emptive process is held back by outdated beliefs that condition monitoring is expensive - which is why up to 95% of all machines inside factories are only sporadically monitored, or often not monitored at all.
“Actually, the opposite is more accurate, because condition monitoring has progressed in leaps and bounds in recent years,” said Jasper Zhang, whose Lifetime Solutions role puts him at the leading edge of technologies designed to prevent problems before they arise, while optimising the lifespan and safety of machinery.
