Condition monitoring technology with the potential to extend service life and reduce the costs of downtime, maintenance and replacement parts, is being introduced by Baker Perkins.

This automatic system alerts engineers when lubrication is required and also gives advance warning of impending failure. It is available as an option on new machinery, and as a retrofit package to existing equipment.

Condition monitoring is initially offered for beater shaft bearings on ‘Tweedy’ dough mixers within the bakery industry, and a demonstration rig is available in Baker Perkin's new Bakery Innovation Centre at Peterborough. The technology will be extended to a wide range of situations where a failure can cause downtime with serious cost consequences. These include process critical components and those where accessibility or availability of parts may cause lengthy delays.

Bearings in food processing equipment need periodic lubrication, and eventual replacement. To maximise cost-effective performance, it is important to lubricate when needed, but not to over-lubricate; it is equally essential to prevent bearing failure, but not to replace unnecessarily.

Condition monitoring is based on acoustic emission (AE), using an ultrasonic transducer mounted next to each bearing, which measures the amount of impact and friction activity within the bearing.

A simple hand-held instrument indicates bearing condition via a single figure called Distress: below 5 indicates satisfactory running; above 10, lubrication is required; if the value remains above 10, the condition of the bearing is suspect, and replacement is going to be needed. The warning level is generally reached well before catastrophic failure happens, enabling replacement to be scheduled for a convenient time.

An additional parameter - dB level - indicates the overall ultrasonic power emitted by the bearing, which increases noticeably as end of life approaches, and helps indicate a convenient time for replacement.

As condition monitoring merely requires the operator to interpret a figure on a
hand-held instrument, it does not need the expertise of a technician. It is also much simpler than the alternative of vibration analysis, which requires several additional parameters to be assessed.

For longer-term management purposes, and in plants where many sensors are installed, enhanced instrumentation can store AE values, and connect to a machine PLC or data capture system for automatic logging and remote monitoring. This also enables the data to be trended and analysed with data from other sources in order to identify the root causes of problems.

For more information
Go to www.bakerperkinsgroup.com

Contact us
Or call our Customer Services on:
+44 1733 283000 fax +44 1733 283008
Email on bpltd@bakerperkinsgroup.com