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Application Notes:
Industrial Gearboxes |
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Many industrial machines use gearboxes to alter and/or vary the standard speeds of electric motors. The lifeblood of any gearbox is the oil within it that lubricates the gears. If the oil level in a gearbox gets too low or loses its ability to lubricate, the gearbox will eventually fail, preceded by overheating. That's where thermal imaging comes in.
Traditionally, preventive maintenance for gearboxes has consisted of regularly checking their oil levels and replenishing lost oil. Some maintenance departments add a predictive element to gearbox maintenance in the form of oil sampling and analysis. Oil analysis, usually performed by an outside laboratory, reveals if the oil in a gearbox has lost its ability to lubricate and will detect any metal particles in the oil, a telltale sign of gear wear that foreshadows a possible failure.
These gearbox maintenance measures are time consuming and expensive and require shutting down the equipment. Also, gearboxes often are in inaccessible or unsafe locations that make oil-level checking and oil sampling difficult.
What to check?Use your thermal imager to scan the surface temperature of the gearboxes on every piece of critical equipment in your plant as determined by key operations, maintenance and safety personnel. That is, scan the gearboxes on all assets whose failure would threaten people, property or product.
What to look for?Because thermography is a non-contact, non-destructive technology, even inaccessible gearboxes in dangerous locations can be scanned while running. Capture thermal images as well as digital images of all critical gearboxes that are running hotter than normal.
What represents a "red alert"?Equipment conditions that pose a safety risk should get the highest priority for repairs. However, the imminent failure of any piece of critical equipment constitutes a red alert. The same key operations, maintenance and safety personnel who determine which production assets are critical should play important roles in quantifying "warning" and "alarm" levels for those assets.
What's the potential cost of failure?For a failed gearbox on a specific mechanical drive at your plant, you can do an analysis of the cost of the repair, lost production opportunity and lost labor costs. At one automotive facility, for example, the estimated cost of the failure of one of the transfers that move vehicles through assembly stops the entire line.
Follow-up actionsWhen you find an overheating gearbox, its thermal image may offer hints as to the cause of its abnormal operating temperature. For example, if an oil pump has failed, its inlet and outlet temperatures will be the same. But whatever the suspected cause of overheating, you can arrange to follow up by checking the oil level, oil quality and metal-particle content of the oil or perform acoustical testing or vibration analysis.
Whenever you discover a problem using a thermal imager, use the associated software to document your findings in a report, including a thermal image and a digital image of...
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