16
Mechanical Technology — May 2013
⎪
Proactive maintenance, lubrication and contamination management
⎪
W
earCheck is the lead-
ing oil condition moni-
toring company in Af-
rica and the only one
with ISO 9001 quality certification,
ISO 14001 certification for environ-
mental management and ISO 17025
accreditation for its laboratory-centric
quality management programme. It
has preferred supplier status from
several original equipment manufac-
turers (OEMs) including Bell and Volvo
Construction Equipment and, along
with WearCheck’s global partners, is
the laboratory of choice for a number
of lubricant suppliers.
With the acquisition of the condi-
tion monitoring division of ABB in
November, 2012, WearCheck became
the only company in Africa – and one
of only a handful globally – that can
provide a complete condition monitor-
ing service to the mining, power, pulp
and paper, sugar, manufacturing and
general industries. “The acquisition of
the ABB division fits into our strategy of
offering a complete industrial condition
monitoring solution – which, on the oil
side, also includes the analysis of heat
transfer, turbine and transformer oils,”
Schutte tells
MechTech
.
The former ABB division was re-
sponsible for most of the condition
monitoring carried out by ABB in the
fields of vibration analysis, infrared,
laser alignment, shaft balancing and oil
analysis, which WearCheck had been
doing on behalf of ABB for a number of
years. This business unit has been in-
corporated into WearCheck’s Reliability
Solutions division, adding significantly
to its capability in this field, and trans-
forming WearCheck into a ‘one-stop
shop’ for condition monitoring.
“Companies have always been do-
ing time based maintenance, which is
essentially preventative maintenance.
If you look at the L10 life of a bearing,
which is defined as the life that 90%
of a large sample of identical bear-
ings can be expected to reach, then a
specific bearing might be expected to
run for 1-million hours at 1 500 rpm.
But it could still fail at 500 000 hours,
or it might last significantly longer,
to 1,5-million hours, for example,”
Schutte explains.
If operating a plant according to pre-
ventative maintenance, the bearing will
simply be changed as soon as it reaches
its L10 life, regardless of its condition.
“You take the risk of a breakdown failure
should the bearing fail at
500 000 hours, and you
lose out if the bearing
is still good condition
at 1-million hours,” he
points out.
“By routinely moni-
toring the real condition
of the bearing, you can
detect the onset of an
early failure and react
to prevent a breakdown.
Or, if no problems are
detected at 1-million
hours, you can safely
leave the bearing run-
ning, because you know,
WearCheck, the oil condition monitoring specialist,
established its Reliability Solutions division in 2012,
which quickly expanded following the purchase of ABB’s
condition monitoring business.
MechTech
talks to Philip
Schutte, the company’s reliability solutions manager,
about a shifting maintenance focus in South Africa
towards total plant health.
WearCheck technician Marcelle Symonds taking vibration readings.
Wearcheck’s Johanesburg oil analysis
laboratory. The company is the lead-
ing oil condition monitoring company in
Africa and the only one with ISO 9001
quality certification, ISO 14001 certi-
fication for environmental management
and ISO 17025 accreditation for its
laboratory-centric quality management
programme.
Total plant health and reliability solutions
via vibration monitoring and oil analysis,
for example, that the bearing condition
is still good,” he adds. “This is known
as predictive maintenance.
“Then there is proactive mainte-
nance, which is when you deliberately
look for ways to extend the life of bear-
ings or to prevent a component from
failing prematurely. You might look at
lubrication and the greasing intervals,
for example, to optimise lubrication
efficiency. You remove any problem
that might reduce the bearing life: you
correct misalignment; install better fil-
tration to remove contaminants; or you
might stiffen the mountings to avoid
resonant frequencies, for example,”
Schutte tells
MechTech
. “Proactive
maintenance is like dieting or going to
the gym to keep your body healthy. You
might still die young, due to some inher-
ent defect, but you are still more likely
to stay healthy for longer,” he suggests.
With respect to maintenance, there
are generally two issues of general
concern: plant availability and plant
reliability – “and they are not the same
thing,” Schutte continues. “In the taxi
industry, for example, we can say that
availability is high because there is one
