Jenton Group offers handheld predictive maintenance system for printers

The new Pocket VibrA from UK company C-Cubed, a subsidiary of Jenton International, allows maintenance personnel to easily track and identify bearing faults and check mechanical systems for misalignment, balance and hotspots.

Previously the domain of outsourced consultants, new handheld technology now permits service managers to analyze vibration issues on the spot – for themselves – and to automatically trend results to allow predictive maintenance.

The strategy of utilizing high technology in maintenance brings with it many benefits such as reduced downtime, and increased manpower utilization. This second point is critical if the industry is to achieve the necessary increases in efficiency.

Pocket VibrA is C-Cubed’s vibration analysis and condition monitoring tool for predictive maintenance which will the company claims will bring about a ‘dramatic improvement’ in machine uptime for printers. Based around a PDA fitted with C-Cubed’s Dataq-CF2 data acquisition card and software, PocketVibrA takes signals from an accelerometer positioned at critical points by the user, processes them based on ISO and pre-loaded interpretation algorithms and presents data separated into several bearing, balance and alignment categories. Repeated testing data is presented graphically within FreeTrend software (included) to allow prediction of when categories are likely to go out of acceptable range.

‘There is absolutely no reason whatsoever that the printing industry shouldn’t receive the many benefits of a predictive maintenance strategy that is already standard in other sectors,’ said C-Cubed’s MD, Dr Russell Sion. ‘High speed rotational machinery is core to the converting industry and if you wait for it to break down – it will always break down at just the wrong time. C-Cubed has a wealth of experience, with its own leading edge sensor and instrumentation technology and world leading partners. Together we can reduce operating costs and improve efficiency and safety.’

A recent study by Swedish consultants VTAB demonstrated that plant maintenance costs could be dramatically reduced by using predictive maintenance. They were able to show that breakdown maintenance cost companies an average of 22€/kW/year and planned maintenance 15€/kW/year. However, companies adopting a predictive maintenance policy could reduce their costs to 11€/kW/year.

With predictive maintenance strategies it is critical to establish the acceptable background levels of vibration on each piece of plant being tested. This information is usually determined using PC based trending software. Unfortunately many equipment manufacturers have either shied away from the challenge or seen the software as a cash-cow.

From the immediate launch of PocketVibrA, C-Cubed accepted the challenge and has included its FreeTrend trending and reporting package in with every system at no extra and no ongoing charge.

The user can easily view the health of all their production assets in an easy to understand format and, if required, directly email data out to experts. However with the in-house use of this type of equipment, more and more users are becoming expert at fault diagnosis themselves.