Air Washer #1 Speed = 1765 CPM 40 HP motor This machine is a horizontal 40 HP motor driving a fan with 16 blades via

a 2:1 belt drive. This machine is located in an air washer in a penthouse on the roof of the plant. Its purpose is to clean the air of dust and dirt. If the air is contaminated it can affect the manufacturing equipment and the goods produced. April 5, 1999 Monitoring commenced on this machine. The first test did not reveal any significant problems. The 1XM axial is quite high, and 2XM in vertical and horizontal suggests that there may have already been a run out/misalignment problem.

The fan reveals an interesting feature. It looks like a bearing tone at 7.93XM. At first we may have looked at that and suspected a bearing tone. However this machine is belt driven. The dimensions of the sheaves are thought to be 6.5" on the motor and 13" on the fan. So the fan should run at exactly half the motor speed. However, with wear and imperfect sheave sizes (that is, the dimensions are not exact), the speed may be just less than half. We also know that there are 16 blades on the fan. So our peak at 7.93X is actually the blade passing rate for the fan. The amplitude level is low, and there are no harmonics, so we will not consider this further. June 1, 1999 In this test the signs of bearing wear are becoming quite strong. The time waveform is a classic. You can see the impacts occurring every 3.1X of running speed. Place the cursor on one of the impacts, and then click on the corresponding position on the next impact. The cursor legend will show the time delta in seconds. Remember, the reciprocal of time is frequency. So, 1 / 0.0109 seconds equals 91.7 Hertz which equals 5502 CPM or 5502 / 1776 equals 3.1X.

The spectrum also showed a peak at 3.1X with strong harmonics. Take a look in the high range data below, collected from 0 100x. Here you can see numerous harmonics of the bearing tone at 3.1x.

From this point on matters only get worse. This is a classic case of a bearing failure. You can see the harmonics and sidebands grow. The height of the noise floor increases. Humps also appear in the spectrum. However, this is also a classic example of what can happen when management do not fully understand or believe in the predictive maintenance program. Reports were handed to management warning that this machine may fail. The reports were basically ignored.

The data for the next three months indicated that the bearing problem was growing worse, yet still no action was taken. For the next two months the bearing fault was deemed to be extremely severe, and the maintenance engineer warned of imminent failure. By this time you could hear the bearings just standing next to the machine. Still no action was taken. The tests in January clearly indicate that the bearing will soon fail. Two days later it did fail catastrophically. So here you have a classic case of a bearing going through the complete failure cycle, with indications in the spectrum and time waveform, with data collected right up to the point of failure. We also have a classic case of management either ignoring the signs and advice given, or deciding that a failure was not important, that perhaps a spare was available or they could successfully operate the plant without this machine (i.e. they have chosen to run this part of the plant using a "breakdown maintenance" philosophy). The maintenance engineer responsible for collecting the data did not agree with the actions taken, believing that the machine should have been repaired before the failure occurred. He has now found work elsewhere.