Two Minute Tips
Four Ways Soft Foot Affects Machinery
Soft foot is a condition that occurs when rotating machinery is positioned incorrectly ─ specifically, when one or more of the “feet” of a machine’s base, frame, or soleplate are not making the same point contact as the others...
Surface Morphology of Railroad Tracks
Surface morphology is a detailed study of a surface. We studied the surfaces of railroad tracks and found that using analytical imaging helps us see what we cannot see with our naked eyes…
- Ashish Arora
- Institute of Noise & Vibration
What is Soft Foot and Why Should We Care About It?
Soft foot occurs when rotating machinery is positioned in place on its base, frame, or soleplate, and one or more of the “feet” are not making good contact...
- Frederic Baudart
- Fluke
Setting Acid Number and Base Number Limits
There is a rule-of-thumb that oil should be condemned at double its new oil Acid Number, or at half of its new oil Base Number. The problem with this rule is that is has too many exceptions to be valid. Rather than identify the valid instances, it is better to understand how to derive a correct limit for any application..
- Evan Zabawski
- TestOil
Static Eccentricity Faults Using Electrical Signature Analysis
Static Eccentricity (air gap) is a fault that is created when the rotor is not in the magnetic center of the stator. Static eccentricity can cause an increase in operating current, overheating, energy losses, and overloading of bearings...
- Mark Koch
- ALL-TEST Pro, LLC
How to Measure and Use Reliability Metrics
Maintenance and reliability managers must have metrics in place to identify needs for improvement.
- Warren Wu
- UpKeep
Plant Criticality Matrix
A rotary equipment does not always behave in the same way. There are times when it needs more attention than regular basis. Sometimes you might even skip monitoring an equipment which was being critically monitored last week.
- Akhil jeet Rathore
- Indorama Petrochemicals & Fertilizers
How to Choose the Right Locations to Measure with Ultrasound
By nature, high-frequency sound is very low-energy, so it tends not to travel far from its source. On a motor-and-pump setup, for instance, we’d ideally like to take our readings…
- Rob Kalwarowsky
- Rob's Reliability
Delaying End of Life
Everything, including motors, has an end of life. Our reliability goal is to identify conditions conducive to failure and correct them so the end of life doesn’t come early...
- Noah Bethel
- PdMA Corporation