When installing Electric Motors on baseplates in order to find shaft center line to match the shaft centerline height for assembly to a pump or other type of rotating equipment.

The formula is as follows on the Motor Frame Size.
Frame Size 182T use the 1st & 2nd digits (18) / 4 = Shaft centerline or the U dimension of 4.5”

Frame Size 324TS (32) / 4 = 8.0”

Reader tip provided by Scott Ginaven, Flowserve Flow Solutions - Seal Group, Burr Ridge Illinois

Thanks Scott!

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Awareness is the key

In this day and age it is always important to be aware of our surroundings. There are a number of safety concerns to keep in the forefront of our minds while we perform our job duties. A large number of safety provisions have been implemented and enforced in today’s industrial environment, and without a doubt these guidelines have been put in place for the well being of those of us who are exposed to the potential dangers that surround us. Although safety is the most important procedure of our duties it is imperative that we remain aware of potential problems that are outside of our specific job scope.

Many times when we are given a specific job to perform, we get caught up in that particular task that we often become oblivious to any outside issues that might exist. A number of years ago I was conducting an annual electrical thermography inspection at a foundry facility, which I had also performed the previous two years. As the day began to come to a close I found myself inspecting the final piece of equipment which happened to be an arc furnace. As I was inspecting the electrical panels and the bus system a small area with a temperature rise of 5° F caught my attention. Upon initial investigation I made an incorrect assumption. In this particular area there was very little room to move around and I assumed the temperature rise did not exist, but that this was simply reflection. The inspection was completed all that was left was the analysis. Upon analyzing the inspection the following day I noticed a detail that somehow I had overlooked the day before as well as the previous years.
For many years, air-cooled bus was the industry standard. In the 1960s, higher current bus systems became necessary, which led to the development of water-cooled bus applications. When this particular arc furnace was installed, which by the way was seven years prior to this inspection, the industry standard had switched to the water cooled bus system for this type of application. With that being said, I noticed on the digital picture I had taken the day before that the water connections had not been properly made. In fact due one small hose misplacement four bus bars were without water. The analysis was completed and a visit back to site confirmed what the picture indicated. During the next scheduled shutdown the small hose was rerouted and water was now circulating through all conductors. Although this arc furnace had been in operation for seven years with this installation mishap, only time would have told if it would have become a catastrophic issue. When asked why this was not found during the prior two inspections, I had to go back to those pictures and investigate. My answer: I simply was not aware of all my surroundings and how they could contribute to possible anomalies. Although the temperature differences were between 1-2 °F during the previous inspections, careful observations may have revealed this sooner.
Lessons learned: Be safe, be smart, and be aware of potential problems due to your surroundings. For the reliability engineer, consider more thorough acceptance testing.

Tip provided by Chris Colson
Allied Reliability, Inc.

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Drop by DMSI’s IMC-2006 booth (N704) for a chance to win a Windows Mobile PDA! While visiting, learn about one of the greatest facilitators of the reactive to PdM change ...Asset Basic Care on Mobile Computers, InspectCE.

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Keep Maintenance Successes a Secret (3 of 12)

The last thing anyone wants when wrecking a maintenance program are success stories from the proactive maintenance effort. When the maintenance department does something right, any self-respecting team wrecker will do whatever it takes to bury the news, and keep it from being shared.

Good news gets people thinking that they might be able to fix the reactive maintenance mess, and then you will have a real challenge on your hands to get them to give up and accept defeat. Keep in mind that your goal is to erode trust between the maintenance and production personnel, and steer them toward making poor decisions. If everyone is rushing around in a panic, and there is no time to plan their actions, you have them in your grasp. Be negative, and when something good happens, make sure to say it was just luck.

Another excellent approach to crushing any success that is achieved is to broadcast as much bad news as you can. This is an old political trick, and it works like a charm. People love to hear about bad news and scandals. It makes them feel better about their own situation. When people make mistakes or the process fails to work, make it into a major issue. It takes a LOT of good news to offset just a little bad news. Use this leverage to your advantage. The secret to your success is to keep all successes a secret.

Tune in next week as we continue to expose the secret lives of seriously disturbed maintenance “professionals” with The Dirty Dozen Tip #4: Ignore the Needs of Your Customers.

“Tip” provided by NoBreakDowns.com
Tel: (218) 327-3114
Web: http://www.NoBreakDowns.com

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Inherent reliability calculation can be simple if we use the right logic.

The logic is that we can stop some failures happening but there are some we can’t. This means all equipment has inherent levels of reliability or availability based on the design and the operating conditions. When data collection systems are set up, failures should be categorised into expected or unexpected. By reviewing your existing data or after collecting some for a short period you can determine the inherent reliability of your equipment.

Furthermore you can understand which failures are caused by the wrong maintenance and which ones are design or process problems.

For a limited time OMCS is offering free data collection review, improvement kit and training notes. This free offer is only open for two days or the first 200 registrations.

For a free data collection review, improvement kit and training notes click here

Like good maintenance is planned - good conferences are planned.

IMC-2006 limits attendance in order to provide the best quality learning experience possible. We are within 50 seats of the limit and we expect the International Maintenance Conference to sell out any day which will close registration.

Visit IMC-2006 online to register or download a conference brochure or call toll free (888) 575 1245 to reserve you space today.

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There are a number of different causes of vibration in rotating equipment. Each cause emits a different set of symptoms. Misalignment between a drive motor and shaft typically results in a dominant 2X harmonic component of vibration. Structural resonances can occur at 1X operating speed or at a harmonic frequency (2X, 3X, etc.) and the effect may vary depending on speed. Looseness in any mechanical connection between bearing caps, bearing pedestals, or foundations can cause excessive vibration levels or amplify a pre-existing unbalance problem. In most cases, a mechanically loose connection will yield harmonic levels of vibration (2X, 3X, etc.) and may also yield sub-harmonic levels of vibration (X/2, X/3, etc.). The common symptoms of a crack propagating in a fan are both an emergence and growth of a 2X component of vibration along with a change in the phase and amplitude of the 1X vibration component. Rotor mass unbalance is the most common cause of excessive vibration in most rotating equipment with a primary symptom being a high 1X vibration level.

Tip provided by:
LORD Corporation
http://www.lord.com
Tel: 1-877-ASK-LORD

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Economic analysis in PM

As I’ve written before I’m deeply involved in thinking about PM and PdM. This is the lead of my chapter on economic analysis. In it I describe the process of analyzing each level.

Economics of PM has three levels of view. The highest level might be called macro economic analysis. In this kind of view the firm decides if PM approaches make sense at all given the organization’s goals and the needs and requirements of the business or field.

To make that decision an organization would look at the current costs of operation. They would project the costs of the operation with the proposed changes. Since any change costs money the analyst would see how many months or years the savings (assuming there is one) would take to pay off the investment.

If speed of pay-off (which is 1 over the Return on Investment –ROI) were adequate then the decision would be made to change from the status quo to the new approach. Once that decision is made the second level looks more and more closely at groups of machines or processes.

For want of a better term I use semi-micro view for the second level. This semi-micro view decides what strategy is most appropriate for a particular machine or group of machines. Even if a decision has been made at the corporate or plant level to use PM/PdM as the dominant strategy, each machine or machine group has factors that influence how to handle it specifically.

Usually the most important factor is the cost of having the unit out of service. A low or negligible downtime cost can scuttle a PM decision for that asset (substitute machine, truck or even building for asset). As before the cost of your current operation for that asset or asset group is compared to the cost of running in the new mode. Given the investment level to bring the asset to PM standards, is there enough Return on Investment (ROI) to make it justifiable?

Once a decision is made about strategy for an asset or an asset group the third level is what PM tasks do we perform?

In the task view or micro view, the cost and consequence of each task is compared to the cost and consequence of the failure mode the task is trying to avoid. It is critical to choose the fewest tasks, the least often that will achieve your goals.

Does this clarify anything for you? I’d like to hear from you if it does or doesn’t!

This is taken from the book The Complete Guide of Preventive and Predictive Maintenance by Joel Levitt, Published by Industrial Press.

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