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E D I T O R’ S

N O T E B O O K

Machinery & Equipment MRO

September 2013

A lot to celebrate

S

ome milestones were reached with our magazine over the summer.

First off, we have a new publisher in Jim Petsis. You can read a bit more about him in our Business Briefs column on page 9. We’re glad to welcome him on board and are already finding his enthusiasm and positive outlook to be a boost for all of us.

This issue also marks a couple of 15-year anniversaries on the magazine.

Ellie Robinson, our stellar, award-winning art director, started doing design and layout for us back in 1998, and she has done a wonderful job of making our content look interesting, compelling and easy to read.

That same year, Montreal-

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based Carroll McCormick started writing for us. He originally was assigned a one-off article, but we were so impressed with his work, we wanted more. As it turns out, we soon made him our senior contributing editor, and he has provided case studies and feature stories – many of them award-winners – in almost every issue over the past 15 years.

Speaking of awards, we were very happy to receive a Grand Award this year in the international APEX Awards for Publication Excellence. We’ve won seven APEX awards in the past, but not at this level until now. I’d like to share with you the judges’ comments: “Makes excellent use 4:08 PM

of the small newspaper format. A bold headline schedule, clear, legible type, imaginative use of captioned photo layouts, sidebars, subheads and bulleted and numbered text – all combine to create an appealing backdrop to the editorial well, where crisply written, interesting features keep readers involved and up-todate on current trends.”

There’s more. We also were nominated for a Canadian Business Press Kenneth R. Wilson Memorial Award for editorial excellence in the Best Industrial/Technical Article category, thanks to the excellent writing of Carroll McCormick. The fact is, his articles are nominated pretty much every year, and he has taken home several Gold and Silver awards on our behalf.

Another thing we’re truly pleased about is the great reader reaction we’re getting to our website. Not only do we

post digital editions of each of our issues online, we regularly update the site with exclusive feature articles as well as industry news, links to relevant industry events, and more. The latest analysis of visitors to our site showed more than 32,000 ‘unique’ visitors stopped by for a read last month. Also, more than 16,000 readers have subscribed to our weekly e-newsletter, which summarizes the new features, news items and events posted on our website in the previous week (if you want it too, it’s easy to sign up at mromagazine.com/subscribe).

You’ll be seeing some of our new ideas being implemented in the months ahead, and we’re also working on a new project we’ll sure many of you will find interesting and useful. We’ll have details on that soon.

MRO Bill Roebuck, Editor & Associate Publisher

MACHINERY AND EQUIPMENT

MAINTENANCE, REPAIR AND OPERATIONS

SEPTEMBER 2013 Volume 29, No. 4 Established 1985 www.mromagazine.com www.twitter.com/mromagazine www.twitter.com/mroontheroad EDITORIAL Bill Roebuck, Editor & Associate Publisher 416-510-6749 broebuck@mromagazine.com Ellie Robinson, Art Director Contributing Editors Simon Fridlyand, Steve Gahbauer, Carroll McCormick, Peter Phillips, Robert Robertson, Angela Webb BUSINESS Jim Petsis, Publisher 416-510-6842 jpetsis@mromagazine.com Eric Achilles Cousineau, Adv. Sales Manager 416-510-6803 eachilles@mromagazine.com Kimberly Collins, Advertising Production 416-510-6779 Melinda Marasigan, Subscription Enquiries 416-442-5600 x3548 Machinery & Equipment MRO is published six times a year to help improve the effectiveness, productivity and practical knowledge of maintenance professionals in Canada’s manufacturing, utilities and resource industries.

AWARD-WINNING MAGAZINE

Editorial & sales office: 80 Valleybrook Drive, Toronto, ON Canada M3B 2S9; tel: 416-442-5600, 1-800-268-7742; fax: 416-510-5140.

Subscription rates. Canada: 1 year $58.95, 2 years $94.95. United States: 1 year $85.95. Elsewhere: 1 year $87.95. Single copies $10 (Canada), $16.50 (U.S.), $21.50 (other). Add applicable taxes to all rates.

On occasion, our subscription list is made available to organizations whose products or services may be of interest to our readers. If you would prefer not to receive such information, please contact us via one of the following methods – phone: 1-800-668-2374, e-mail: privacyofficer@businessinformationgroup.ca, fax: 416-442-2191, mail to Privacy Officer-Business Information Group, 80 Valleybrook Drive, Toronto, ON Canada M3B 2S9. ©2013. Contents of this publication are copyright and may not be reproduced in whole or in part in any form without written consent of the publisher. The publisher cannot assume responsibility for the validity of claims in items reported or advertised.

Machinery & Equipment MRO is published by BIG Magazines LP, a div. of Glacier BIG Holdings Company Ltd. Bruce Creighton, President, BIG; Alex Papanou, Vice-President, BIG; Tim Dimopoulos, Executive Publisher, BIG. Publications Mail Agreement No. 40069240. Return postage guaranteed. ISSN 0831-8603 (print). ISSN 1923-3698 (digital). Return undeliverable Canadian addresses and change of address notices to: MRO Circulation Dept., 80 Valleybrook Drive, Toronto, ON Canada M3B 2S9.

MRO, USPS 012-846 is published six times per year by Business Information Group.

US office of publication: 2424 Niagara Falls Blvd., Niagara Falls, NY 14304-0357.

Periodicals Postage Paid at Niagara Falls, NY. US postmater: Send address changes to Machinery and Equipment MRO, PO Box 1118, Niagara Falls NY 14304.

PEMAC

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Periodical Fund (CPF) for our publishing activities.

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I N D U S T R Y September 2013

Machinery & Equipment MRO

READY-TO-WORK ENGINEERS GOAL OF NEW PROGRAM Brampton, ON – Sheridan College has become a member of the CDIO Initiative – a worldwide movement to restore the balance between teaching ‘practice’ skills and the fundamentals of math and science to engineering students.

What started as a partnership between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston and a few Swedish universities in 2001 has gained significant international momentum, with 103 institutions adopting the model. Sheridan is the fifth Canadian institution and the first college in the world to be accepted.

As a new philosophy for engineering education, the framework educates students to Conceive, Design, Implement and Operate (CDIO) complex, valueadded engineering products, processes and systems in a modern, team-based, global environment. Rich in projectbased, hands-on learning, it aims to produce engineers who are ‘ready to

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Photo courtesy Shaeffler AG.

26 tons of bearings destroyed

as one in four in the industry worked fewer hours.

In utilities, 98,000 hours were added to workers’ schedules as a result of the flooding. In construction, 7.9% of workers put in 440,000 additional hours in the second half of June, the highest among all industries.

The proportion working fewer hours was similar for men and women, at 13.8% and 13.2% respectively. The average number of hours lost by men, however, at 26.2 hours, was more than the 23.5 hours lost by women.

SKILLS SHORTAGES COSTING ONTARIO $28 BILLION ANNUALLY

A big claw was used to lift the fake bearings into a scrap press.

engineer’ when they graduate.

The CDIO syllabus codifies what engineers should know and be able to do when they graduate. Major competencies include disciplinary knowledge and reasoning, personal and professional skills (like experimentation, prioritization, resourcefulness, self-awareness, ethics and integrity), teamwork and communications, and understanding the societal and enterprise context.

Toronto – Ontario is losing out on as much as $24.3 billion in economic activity and $3.7 billion in provincial tax revenues annually because employers cannot find people with the skills they need to innovate and grow in today’s economy, according to a Conference Board of Canada report.

“Closing the skills gap could help the province reduce public debt or invest in much-needed infrastructure improvements,” said Michael Bloom, the Board’s vice-president of organizational effectiveness and learning.

Skills gaps currently affect much of Ontario’s economy, including sectors that account for almost 40% of employment: manufacturing; health care; professional, scientific and technical services; and financial industries. Skills gaps are projected to worsen if action is not taken.

“Ontario cannot afford to live with a skills gap of this magnitude. The need for action is urgent, since changes in educa-

© stevecoleimages/iStockphoto

Schweinfurt, Germany – Shaeffler AG has destroyed 26 tons of counterfeit roller bearings marked with the INA and FAG brand. Their value was over $1.4 million.

To destroy the bearings, they were lifted by the gripper arm of an excavator into a scrap press. The bearings came out of the press chopped and broken into pieces or so badly damaged that they were rendered unusable. Large-size bearings with an outside diameter of more than one metre, which were too big for the scrap press, were destroyed with a cutting torch.

In 2007, around 40 tons of counterfeit bearings were destroyed at the Schaeffler site in Schweinfurt. A large proportion of the counterfeit products originated from raids at bearing distributors in Europe, including Italy and Great Britain. But some of the counterfeit bearings were also from Germany.

“Brand and product piracy is not a phenomenon that is limited to Asia or South East Europe. It also takes place right on our doorstep,” says Ingrid Bichelmeir-Böhn, leader of the Global Brand Protection Team at Schaeffler.

“The German and European markets are no longer only flooded with counterfeit luxury or consumer goods, there is also an increase in counterfeit industrial products that are relevant to safety, such as rolling bearings.”

Groups such as the World Bearing Association (stopfakebearings.com), the German Anti-Counterfeiting Association (markenpiraterie-apm.de) and the Quality Brands Protection Committee (qbpc.org.cn) ensure that the public is informed about the risks caused by the use of counterfeit industrial products.

These organizations also work in conjunction with authorities, with the objective of creating the legal and organizational prerequisites to effectively fight counterfeit products.

Shaeffler recommends that, in general, it is always best to purchase goods from a source that is 100% reliable, i.e. from manufacturers and authorized distributors. In the case of any uncertainty that distributors and customers may experience during incoming goods inspections, Bichelmeir-Böhn and her team can be contacted at piraterie@schaeffler.com.

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N E W S W A T C H

While workers in many Alberta sectors lost work, others gained work hours with flood cleanup.

ALBERTA FLOODING IN JUNE CAUSED LOSS OF 5 MILLION HOURS OF WORK Ottawa – Extensive flooding affected Southern Alberta in the second half of June 2013. As a result, 300,000 employed Albertans, or 13.5% of the total employed population in the province, lost 7.5 million hours of work during that period, according to a review by Statistics Canada. At the same time, 134,000 people, or 6.0% of workers, put in 2.4 million additional hours. The net effect was a loss of 5.1 million hours of work.

There was a net loss in hours worked in all industries, except utilities and public administration. Workers in those industries experienced a small net gain in their hours as a result of the flooding.

In some industries, however, the net losses were large.

Workers in natural resources, the majority of whom are in oil and gas extraction, totalled 1.4 million hours lost,

tion will take years to bear fruit in the labour force,” said Bloom.

Responses to the Board’s Ontario Employer Skills Survey show that employers most need post-secondary graduates in science, engineering and technology, and business and finance.

The most widespread needs are for employees with two- or three-year college diplomas (57%), four-year degrees (44%), and trades (41%).

The negative impact on the Ontario economy goes beyond the issue of skills shortages. Another issue with economic consequences is skills mismatches in the labour force – individuals whose skills and training are not being fully utilized in the jobs they have.

The Conference Board estimates that these mismatches, by themselves, cost Ontario’s economy and workers up to $4.1 billion in foregone gross domestic product. Many post-secondary education graduates have skills and training

in sectors with few available jobs. In addition, employers sometimes fail to make the most of their employees’ skills and talents.

MAINTENANCE CONFERENCE HEADS TO CALGARY Calgary, AB – MainTrain 2013 will feature skill-building sessions, interactive workshops, technical sessions, case studies and supplier presentations covering a wide range of maintenance, reliability and asset management subject areas.

The four-day conference takes place at the Sheraton Cavalier Hotel in Calgary, Nov. 18-21, 2013.

MainTrain is organized by the Plant Engineering and Maintenance Association of Canada (PEMAC).

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield is the keynote speaker for a gala dinner.

Machinery & Equipment MRO contributing editor Tex Leugner will present a session on ‘Effective Data Collection for Thorough Failure Analysis’, while columnist Cliff Williams of ERCO Worldwide will hold a session called ‘Canada’s Got Talent’. As well, former contributor Len Middleton is a co-presenter of PEMAC’s MMP Module 1 course, which is being held during the conference.

For more information, call 1-877-5237255 or visit maintrain.ca.

IFPE CONFERENCE TOPICS HAVE BEEN SET OUT Las Vegas, NV – IFPE 2014 will be held March 4-8, 2014, at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas, NV, colocated with the Conexpo-Con/Agg exposition for the construction industries. The huge trade show also includes several conference sessions.

IFPE education provides critical information on new power transmission and motion control technologies to engineers and others involved in the design and manufacturing process. The IFPE Technical Conference is expected to reveal the latest industry research and developments. The Innovations Theater is applications-focused and for the first time will feature abstract-submitted presentations.

Topic areas for IFPE 2014 education include fluids (including new and green); fluid power systems; fluid power in renewable energy applications; basic components; controls and control systems; auxiliary components related to fluid power; seals and sealing technology; analysis, modelling and simulation; noise and vibration (analysis, measurement, control); materials and manufacturing (including new and green); impact of Tier 4 and beyond; and standards (industry, national, international).

For more information, visit ifpe.com.

MODERATE EMPLOYMENT GAINS EXPECTED IN MONTHS AHEAD Ottawa – The Help-wanted index compiled by the Conference Board of Canada fell 9.5 percentage points in June 2013, bringing it to 128.7.

With domestic demand expected to slow this year due to a cooling housing market, soft consumer spending, and slower public and private investment, employers are likely to be cautious about their near-term hiring.

Including June’s drop, the recent trend in the index suggests that employment gains will be moderate in the coming months.

MRO More detailed versions of most of these items can be found on our website at www.mromagazine.com.

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Online Reader Inquiry No. 119

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13-09-03 9:12 AM

S E V E R E - S E R V I C E

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M A I N T E N A N C E

September 2013

Machinery & Equipment MRO

Generator repair requires

PERSEVERANCE E

arlier this year, representatives of one of the biggest and oldest companies involved in subsea cable repair and installation around the world contacted us from England. They asked if we could rewind and repair a large generator for a ship in their fleet. We were the sixth company they contacted; the previous five companies had said they could not do the repairs.

We eagerly took on the job of rewinding and rebuilding the 1,600 kW generator. It proved to be a challenging task, but we are driven by challenges. It was not an ordinary generator: it was an old unit manufactured in Europe – the nameplate was written in French.

The stator was rewound with formwound coils in groups of eight continuously wound units. Typically, form-wound coils are wound individually and then connected to each other, after installation, into groups as required. We could only guess that, originally, the coils had been wound continuously in groups of eight because space restrictions would not allow for the connections to be made after the installation of all the coils.

and connected each coil as required in a very restricted space. Completing the job required perseverance, patience and skill. Thanks to our dedicated team, we accomplished what five other rewind shops would not attempt.

The ship is now on the Pacific Ocean,

Photos courtesy Electro Motors Co. Ltd.

Old machinery and tight spacing make retrofit of cable repair ship’s generator challenging. BY COSIMO GERACITANO

and its crew is back to repairing underwater cables.

MRO Cosimo Geracitano is with Electro Motors Co. Ltd., Port Coquitlam, BC. For more information, visit www. electromotors.ca.

Five companies had turned down the chance to rewind and repair the ship’s large generator.

You work hard producing the best product in the industry, without compromising on performance or safety.

For the retrofit, single coils were installed and connected in a very restricted space.

When

The original stator was rewound with formwound coils in groups of eight continuously wound units.

To our surprise, we found out that North American coil manufacturers cannot make coils this way; the equipment required to do so would be very expensive, we were advised. If some place in the world were equipped to do so, the cost for one set of coils would be more than double the original cost, making the rewinding and repairing of this old generator unfeasible. However, the cable repair and installation company needed a solution, as it would be too expensive for it to retrofit the ship with a new generator.

Ultimately, we decided to have one set of single coils manufactured. We installed

will do.

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Online Reader Inquiry No. 122

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T H E

S A F E T Y

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F I L E

September 2013

Improving worker safety everywhere If safety standards like Canada’s were introduced worldwide, it would save thousands of lives each year.

BY SIMON FRIDLYAND

T

he collapse of a garment factory in Bangladesh in April, where more than 1,100 workers were killed, shocked the Canadian public. As a result, retail industry groups in North America, Europe and Japan promised an initiative to have all the factories from where they buy garments inspected within nine months to a year. Major factory upgrades are to follow.

Some major media outlets called it a smoke-and-mirrors exercise. It is designed to pacify the western public.

The question is, why now? Only last November, 112 workers were killed in a Bangladesh factory fire. At that time, no one raised any desire for inspections of factories or upgrades. Only when the death of 1,129 people reached our TV screens and newspapers, did action become a priority.

We, as consumers, don’t like buying products that are made by child labour or slave labour, or by people who earn $126 a month and have a very good chance of dying on the job.

Two UN agencies have directed their attention to the prevention of child labour worldwide: the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the International Labour Organization (ILO). They have helped define the problem and develop international legal frameworks to help to correct the problem. As a result of their work, we now have several international treaties – or conventions – banning child labour and identifying concrete measures for governments to take. Once a country ratifies a convention, UN bodies monitor compliance and hold countries accountable for violations.

Goods produced with the involvement of slavery or trafficked labour meet the international definition for the proceeds of crime. The UN Convention defines ‘proceeds of crime’ as “any property derived from or obtained, directly or indirectly, through the commission of an offence.” By this definition, goods produced through the use of slavery and trafficked labour and any revenue generated from the sale of such goods are proceeds of crime.

I think it is time to establish internationally recognized minimum standards for worker safety. These standards would be ratified by participating counties and enforced similar to that for child or slave labour occurrences.

Occupational health and safety is not always visible to the untrained eye. For example, in order to understand the structural integrity of a building, an engineer examines it against the building code requirements, as well as the best engineering practice. The same applies to fire safety. Machine safety is examined against machine guarding standards, and so on.

Because safety is something that may not be readily visible, and is potentially very costly to comply with, in

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jurisdictions where safety is not a real priority, unsafe conditions for workers prevail. In June, for example, 120 people died in a poultry plant in China, yet only three years ago, a Communist party official called it “an inspiring factory and a leading enterprise.”

In Canada, we pay a lot of attention to workers’ safety; of course there is room for improvement. Based on 2008 statis-

Machinery & Equipment MRO

tics, there were 6.1 fatalities in Canada per 100,000 workers. During the same time, officially, there were 11.1 fatalities per 100,000 workers in China. There were 70,000 workers killed in China by workplace accidents last year – roughly 200 per day. That’s down from 75,572 in 2011 and 79,552 in 2010. I could not find any reliable statistics for Bangladesh.

If a system like Canada’s was introduced in those countries, it would definitely save thousands of lives each year.

It would also provide a more level playing field for Canadian manufacturers. The cost of only maintaining compliance with occupational health and safety regulations for small to medium size enterprises (SMEs) is about $1,000 per employee in the industrialized world.

This does not take into consideration bringing facilities, machinery and management systems into compliance. However, these expenses are absolutely necessary to provide the minimum standard of worker's safety. In my opinion,

low-cost jurisdictions are cutting corners as far as worker's safety is concerned.

A common criticism is that a low-cost jurisdiction’s ability to maintain its competitive advantage stems from its weak enforcement of workers’ rights. The argument is simple: it is easy to keep costs down when you aren’t paying workers a minimum wage or investing in health and safety protection.

We cannot do anything about low wages; however, we can demand health and safety protection for workers, the way we demand protection against slave and child labour. Whether we are in Bangladesh or Canada, we still should have the right to be safe and alive after a day at work.

MRO Simon Fridlyand, P.Eng., of SAFE Engineering Inc., specializes in industrial health and safety concerns and PSR compliance. For more information, visit www.safeengineering.ca.

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Online Reader Inquiry No. 124

13-09-03 9:21 AM

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M A I N T E N A N C E

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Machinery & Equipment MRO

September 2013

A

lthough I have mentioned in this column before how important it is to back up your CMMS database, recent events have brought me to discussing it again.

In the past six months, I have seen some disastrous failures of data backup systems. Companies that thought their CMMS data was secure faced some incredible setbacks when their database servers failed.

I am going to tell you four stories about some recent database losses. They will demonstrate why backups and technical support for your database are so important.

The first story comes from one of my company’s clients in North Carolina. This brand-new facility just started production in January 2013 and it has been populating its CMMS software with equipment, inventory and preventive maintenance tasks since construction started on the plant two years ago. Hours and hours of critical equipment information was gathered and entered into its CMMS program. Hundreds of work orders were created to record equipment, process failures and corrective actions during commissioning that could be used at new plants in the future.

On July 22, the CMMS server failed.

The facility IT person was confident that the server was successfully backed up every evening to a tape drive. When the staff checked the tape drive for the back-

Backing up your CMMS You won’t know how much you’ll miss your data until it’s gone. Here are four examples that highlight the need for good backups. up to retrieve the CMMS database, they found that there was none. Upon investigation, it was discovered the server backup log showed an exception error for the CMMS database.

What they found was the database was continually active 24 hours a day, every day. The technology they use for backups would only back up databases that were inactive during the backup process; therefore no backups of the CMMS were being successfully initiated.

After checking with a number of their other plants, they discovered several of them had the same problem. As I write this article, four days have passed since

this incident at the plant. One backup has been found that is over a year old. Efforts by the plant’s IT person and the CMMS support team have not been able to recover any more recent data from the server.

They now realize that much of their data is missing and a plan will be needed to re-enter the data. This will take a substantial amount of time and effort by the maintenance department, time they don’t have available. Steps have been taken to correct the backup issue with scripts that will back up the database to the server even when the CMMS is active, and the solution has been sent to other plants with the same issue.

Next up is another large corporation. It manufactures bread products in Quebec.

A young engineering student, although warned not to, attempted to manipulate some of the database tables in the company’s CMMS software. In the process of doing so, he crashed its CMMS program.

Even if you are sure your CMMS is being backed up, ask your IT department to double check the backup files.

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The database was corrupted and inoperable. The staff went to restore its database from a tape backup, only to discover that the backup tape system had not been operating for several months.

With mountains of equipment PMs, repairs and sanitation records, there was no option but to try to recover the data from the corrupted files. It took over three weeks for its CMMS tech support team to recover and reconstruct the database. During this time, the CMMS was out of service, which caused a great deal of hardship for the maintenance and purchasing departments.

This incident prompted the company to regularly check its plant and other locations to make sure its backup systems were actually working.

Another case comes from a building materials manufacturer in New Brunswick. Late last fall, its CMMS suddenly stopped working. The main server that housed both the CMMS database and the daily backup had failed. This particular server used a multiple drive technology that split the database over several hard drives, which was supposed to be more reliable and safer for data storage.

When the server failed, the staff discovered there was no local support for a server of this type and that data recovery was not a simple process. The server had to be sent to a Toronto data recovery company that specialized in these types of

servers. Although the turnaround period was three days after the server was received from New Brunswick, it carried an expensive price tag. All the data was recovered and steps were taken to run the backup on another system, separate from the database server.

Finally, a Nova Scotia organization learned that backing up its CMMS was critical to its operations. It has several facilities, with each site using a stand-alone computer to host its CMMS program and database. The sites are not connected to the organization’s network, nor do they have backup systems in place.

Because its software and databases are all located on one computer at each site, the chances of losing the complete database is very probable and in fact has happened at three of the organization’s facilities in the past six months.

You might say they haven’t learned very much from their recent losses; however two of the facilities wanted to start their CMMS over again because their first ones were never properly formatted with correct naming conventions and nomenclatures. As a result, the software was hard to navigate and rarely used.

Reloading the CMMS program was not a big issue, however it did point out to the staff that they must back up their data.

The corporate IT at this point does not have a common network where the facility databases can be stored and backed up properly to a common server. For now, each facility has purchased an external hard drive and has scheduled daily backups of its database in case there are any future failures of the stand-alone workstations.

There are alternatives to maintaining your own database and backup systems.

Most CMMS companies offer web-based applications where the CMMS program is accessed over the web. The hosting company maintains the data and backup systems at secure data storage sites.

However, the cost of ownership is often much more than owning and maintaining your own software and hardware.

Also, some organizations have security protocols that do not allow web-based software applications; due to security risks, they must maintain their own server systems.

So let’s see what we have learned from other people’s CMMS data failures.

1. Even if you are sure your CMMS is being backed up, ask your IT depart ment to double check the backup files.

2. If you are running a stand-alone com puter, find a way to back up your data.

The external drive solution works well.

3. Maintain your annual tech support service from your CMMS provider. In two of the cases mentioned here, that support helped to retrieve lost data.

Without this help, the data would not have been recovered.

Building a CMMS database takes a lot of time. The information it holds is critical to your maintenance operations.

Treat it with care, protect its integrity and back it up regularly.

Like most things in life, you don’t know how much you will miss it until it is gone.

MRO ©Thinkstock

BY PETER PHILLIPS

Peter Phillips of Trailwalk Holdings, a Nova Scotia-based CMMS consulting and training company, can be reached at 902-798-3601 or by sending an e-mail to peter@trailwalk.ca.

13-09-03 9:22 AM

Industrial Lubrication

September 2013

Lubrication, Tribology and Hydraulics ©iStockphoto/Thinkstock

Increasing equipment reliability with proper lubricant selection

MRO specialists in various industries use Smart Lubrication solutions to help improve equipment reliability and extend maintenance intervals.

The load, environment, temperature and speed of the application must be considered. BY GENE M. FINNER

M

odern lubrication technology can provide MRO specialists with proven, effective problem-solvers for today’s demanding applications. Different friction regimes require different lubricant forms, and proper lubricant selection must consider the application load, environment, temperature and speed.

Inadequate lubrication or an incorrect lubricant choice can lead to equipment failure.

When conventional or OEM-recommended lubricants fail, MRO specialists need to identify the proper lubricant to get the job done right. Knowing the friction regime involved,

both. In startup and shutdown periods or with transient shock loads, conditions can occur in which the relative motion and/or the distance between surfaces converge toward zero.

Different lubricant forms Any machine, component or surface requiring lubrication will have a primary lubrication regime based on its steady-state operation.

Fluid-based lubricants are used for hydrodynamic and elastohydrodynamic lubrication.

Solid lubricants are used for effective boundary-regime lubrication. A combination of lubricant forms often is needed for mixed regimes.

Silicone compounds are sticky, non-hardening, thermally and chemically stable materials made with silicone fluid, inert fume silica and other additives. They are useful as light-load lubricants, non-curing sealants, electrical moisture barriers and electronic damping media.

specialty lubricants to help prevent or solve challenging lubrication problems. They know proper lubricant selection can help them optimize friction and wear control to save energy, maintain efficiency and lower maintenance costs. Here are some examples of the lubricant choices available.

Application conditions

Selecting an effective lubricant must consider critical application variables. These are summarized by the acronym LETS – Load, Environment, Temperature and Speed.

Load involves the amount of force or stress placed on the component. Heavy loads may require boundary lubrication with specialty greases, anti-seize pastes or anti-friction coatings with solid lubricants.

Moderate loads may require greases or pastes with lower amounts of solids. Light loads can usually be handled by greases, oils or silicone Molykote brand anti-seize pastes and anti-friction coatings, fortified with solid lubricants, can aid A mining operator uses Molykote 111 Silicone Compound compounds. proper tightening and non-destructive disassembly of threaded connections. to lubricate and seal knife valves that were failing with a Environment affects mineral-oil grease. the lubricant durability in the application. High understanding the capabilities and advantages Greases are usually composed of 80% to 90% humidity may require solid lubricants. Waterof different lubricant forms, and analyzing the oil in a thickener and a few per cent of special rich environments need lubricants with waterspecific application conditions are important additives, including solid lubricants. Greases washout resistance. Exposure to chemicals and considerations. work best when speeds are moderate to high, fuels may call for fluorosilicone grease. Dusty, friction is rolling rather than sliding, and a dirty conditions may need a dry-film lubricant. regular lubrication service interval is possible.

Inaccessible components may require an oxidaLubrication friction regimes Oils typically consist of 95% to 99% lubrition-resistant grease, paste or AFCs. Effective lubricating films must meet the cating oil and a few per cent of additives to Temperature includes the actual operating requirements of one or more friction regimes enhance pour point, viscosity index and resistemperature, soak temperature at standstill and or conditions. They are formed as a function of tance to oxidation or corrosion, and to aid the ambient temperature. Synthetic lubricants application speeds, loads, component geomewear prevention. Some oils are mixed with generally have a wider service-temperature tries, substrate material properties and lubricant solid lubricants to provide an easily applied range than conventional greases and oils. Silimaterial properties. dispersion. cone-based lubricants are proven in cold temHydrodynamic regimes involve fluid lubricants Anti-seize pastes consist of roughly equal peratures. Some high-temperature greases and forced between opposing surfaces by speed and amounts of oil and solid lubricants, along with oils stiffen in extreme cold and oxidize or dry load. The fluid keeps the surfaces apart with small amounts of special additives. Pastes often out in extreme heat. pressure. As pressure increases, the fluid may are used where components are static for long Speed can run from high to low and involve act like a solid, deform the surfaces, and create periods of time and where loads are high, rotational and reciprocating speeds as well an elastohydrodynamic (EHD) regime. speeds are slower and friction is sliding rather as frequency of motion. Static conditions are Boundary regimes are not created by fluid than rolling. harsh on liquid-based lubricants. Slower speeds under pressure, but rather by surface-active Dry-film lubricants or anti-friction coatings can require use of higher-viscosity oils or, with materials that form boundary films on and (AFCs) consist of solvent, resin binder and solid heavier loads, anti-seize pastes or AFCs. Higher between the substrate surfaces. Anti-wear and lubricants plus other additives. Once dry, the speeds can be best served with lower-viscosity extreme-pressure (EP) additives and solid lubricating film is tack-free and will not attract lubricants to prevent problems with shear. lubricants can adhere to surfaces and provide dust or dirt. Dry-film lubricants work best in boundary layers. applications where speeds are slow and loads Mixed regimes combine hydrodynamic and Effective MRO problem-solvers are high. boundary regimes; some applications have MRO specialists in various industries can use

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Photos: Dow Corning Corp.

©Hemera/Thinkstock

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Industrial greases

• To gain extended lubrication reliability and avoid potential service disruptions, an elec tric utility lubricates circuit breaker trip latch-and-close bearings with fluorosilicone based Molykote 3451 Chemical-Resistant Bearing Grease.

• When a recommended grease for rolling element bearings in pillow blocks could not withstand frequent water washdown, a cheese plant switched to Molykote G-1502FM Grease and sharply reduced the number and costs of bearing failures.

• Replacing a lithium grease that required frequent service, a lime calcining plant chose Molykote Longterm 2 Plus Grease for severe-duty bearings in its fans, crushers and conveyors. u

Lubricating oils

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To eliminate harmful degradation byproducts of PAG-based compressor oils, a pet-food manufacturer selected Molykote L-4646 High-Temperature Compressor Oil for extended-life lubrication, cooling and corrosion protection.

Oils failed under high contact pressures on a cement plant’s ball-mill support bearings; Molykote M-55 Dispersion provided a solid lubricant film to prevent bearing wear, noise and failure.

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Anti-seize pastes

• An aluminum-casting operation replaced an industrial grease with Molykote P-74 Paste for more effective, reliable lubrication of mixer-component roller bearings used in melting ovens.

• Applied to threaded pipe connections used in rock-drilling machines, Molykote G-N Metal Assembly Paste helps prevent micro- welding, seizures and difficult assembly/ disassembly. u

Anti-friction coatings

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With corrosion protection, dry-film lubrication and high-pressure wear resistance, Molykote 3402-C Anti-Friction Coating is helping extend the service life of yaw brakes for wind turbines.

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