Almost all machinery that moves requires bearings. However, they are liable to degradation over time. Bearings will fail for a number of reasons but the key take away is that ALL bearings will degrade at some point and if they are left unchecked, maintained or replaced WILL fail. Knowing the root cause of damage can help prevent future failures.
According to ISO 15243, damages left undiagnosed can actually mask the underlying cause if left too long. Most decay in bearing quality occur when lubrication has been used up in the bearing. Identifying when this happens and refilling the oil in the bearing a key way of extending life span.
84% of degradation to bearings occurs once installed. Monitoring can detect abnormalities caused by these and allow preparations for maintenance or replacement, ultimately avoiding failure and saving money. A failure of a bearing is not just the part itself, but for example in the marine industry, the cost to a vessel owner is repair, fitting and downtime in dock and loss of earning whilst not operational. Without systematic procedures and planned maintenance (enabled by condition monitoring) then cost can be very damaging to a business.
Why should you choose the Portamonitor®?
Appropriate monitoring matters because false diagnosis can result in undue downtime, wasted time, money and resources.
When to use?
Portamonitor® can be used for pre-service (proof) testing as well as in-service (re-qualification) testing and condition monitoring.
What is a Distress® unit?
Distress® provides an instant indication of the health of the bearings. It measures the transient activity, such as impacts, friction and surface deformation caused by micro-pitting and fractures. Algorithms inside the Portamonitor® sort this data for comparison against acceptable limits categorised by a number.
Know the state of your system:
The display on the Portamonitor® will show a numeric value indicating the level of distress, for instance: 5-10 indicates the system in “OK”. Between the value of 10-15 indicates the system is “SUSPECT”, and requires further monitoring, whereas >15 indicates a “POOR” system and requires attention.
Save yourself money:
The Portamonitor® is low cost and is very easy to use and train crew and easy to integrate into scheduled maintenance. Using this regularly extends the lifetime of key pumps, bearings and gearboxes saving significant amounts of money over the lifetime of the vessel, extending the time between machinery replacement and ensuring failures do not occur at critical times
KEYWORDS: Bearing, Rotating Machinery, Ultrasonics, Lubrication, Bearing Indicator, Acoustic Emission
