By Sara W. Errico

Anytime an industry depends on special machinery, it relies on condition monitoring for superior maintenance. Through this process, maintenance personnel can foresee any possible malfunctions and solve them before they occur. This process is carried out in many ways to address conditions that exist in various pieces of equipment across all industries. Every individual process was designed with the intention of extending the life of equipment and keeping operators out of harm’s way. They are used in some of the most complex and intense work environments in the world.

One very important condition to keep track of is the vibration created during normal operations. In this scenario, measurements are taken through transducers and the results are then compared with standard historical readings from similar pieces of machinery. Experts can look at these readings and analyze them in a rather complex manner, often determining specifically what sort of malfunction in a machine would lead to the vibration being off in the way that is being represented.

Visual inspection is another method of condition monitoring, though it is far less advanced and can sometimes be less of a science then the detailed pinpoint accuracy of vibration analysis. It is often used in conjunction with other more exact measurements. This sort of inspection takes a good pair of eyes and a great deal of understanding about the machine in question, because there are usually a great deal of minor details that can be overlooked and lead to major problems.

Yet another method, which functions through comparing an existing machine’s status to an ideal model, is known as performance analysis. Machine owners use this process to determine how much an older model is costing them in time and productivity and when they start shopping around for a new one. Even the best kept machines will eventually wear out over time and cost more money to maintain while producing less money through a gradual decline in productivity, so it is good to know when it is costing more than it’s worth.

All industries wherein machines such as motors, turbines, and centrifugal pumps are frequently used should invest in some sort of condition monitoring in order to ensure efficiency and safety. There is no greater form of maintenance than preventive maintenance, and anything that helps keep disaster from striking is a worthy investment. Each year this type of analysis becomes more advanced, with many businesses now using computers in conjunction with human engineers to monitor these devices in a number of different ways.

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