Do you listen to your equipment?
Do you hear motors complaining about overload?
Do you see your pump packings crying a flood?
Do you hear you bearings whine about contaminated lubricants?
Do you notice your steam system that coughs excessive condensate and it’s complains about strained elbows?
There are two types of people in mills. There are people who notice when equipment show signs of distress, and people who don’t.
We often call people who don’t see the signs of distress in equipment for “mill blind” people.
The mill blindness may not be intentional, but rather a product of being so used to the environment that poor equipment condition just isn’t noticed.
Let us supply you with a small informal “mil blindness test for you.
Below are a few examples of “mill blindness” we often see in pulp and paper mills.
Most of you have at some point seen these equipment problems before, but ask yourself, are we accepting these conditions or are the problems corrected in our mill?
Basic Equipment Condition Monitoring
Leaking rotary joints are so common in many mills that they have become accepted over the years.
It’s not unusual for new employees in a paper machine area to be told that leaking rotary joints are normal, and that leaks can’t be detected before steam is coming out of the joint.
Steam joints often leak when the carbon ring wears inside the joint.
The carbon ring is designed to wear and start to leak after wearing a certain amount.
The wear in most joint designs can easily be measured since the carbon ring is spring loaded and two surfaces of the joint moves as the carbon ring wears.
For example, a certain Valmet model requires carbon ring change when the distance (a) in figure 1 wears to 0.59 in. (15 mm).
Many Johnson joints have a pin to indicate the amount of wear on the carbon ring.
Figure 1. Valmet steam joint.
Spare Part Storage
Spare part storage can have a huge impact on the level of planning and scheduling of maintenance jobs and the reliability of equipment.
But, we often forget the direct reliability impact of incorrect management of spare parts.
Some spares are perishable goods, mostly components with rubber or plastic material such as belts, couplings and o-rings.
For example, the commonly used orange peel coupling has a “best before date” when purchased, they are designed to last five to six years whether in use or stored in the store room. It is common to find couplings five years and older in stores even though their life already is exceeded.
Bearings should be wrapped and sealed in order to avoid contaminants in the bearing. It’s not uncommon to find bearings unwrapped and dusty in a store room.
Mill sites often have a small vibration in the store room from surrounding equipment.
When bearings are fixed in the same position, the vibration causes fatigue damage inside the bearings, because the bearing balls keep “tapping” the outer bearing race.
Shafts on stored motors should therefore be turned a quarter turn on a periodical interval to reduce the damage.
Take a look in your store room, are the shafts of motors for store room personnel to be turned?
Figure 2. Top, bearing stored without protective wrapping. Bottom an “orange peel” coupling with manufacturing quarter and year on the sticker to indicate perishable date.
If you have questions or comments regarding this article, please contact us at info@idcon.com
