Tag: planned maintenance

The True Cost of Downtime: Reliability Pays for Itself

Published on by Jordan T ShouseLeave a comment

When a piece of equipment goes down, the cost isn’t limited to the replacement part.

Production stops. Employees wait. Maintenance gets pulled away from other projects. Orders can fall behind. Scrap and quality issues can increase. And depending on the process, a few minutes of downtime can quickly become a very expensive problem.

That’s why reliability should be considered during the design process, not after equipment begins to fail.

Downtime Costs More Than You Think

A previous EXAIR application provides a great example.

At an aluminum rodding facility, material accumulating underneath conveyors required regular cleaning and contributed to premature conveyor component failures. The problem was costing the facility more than $85,000 per year in cleaning expenses and approximately 7,100 minutes of unscheduled downtime.

EXAIR Super Air Knives were installed to prevent the material from accumulating underneath the conveyors. The total implementation cost was approximately $16,000, with the cleaning-cost savings alone producing a payback of less than three months.

Once downtime and reduced conveyor maintenance were considered, the return was even faster.

That example highlights an important point:

The purchase price of equipment is only one part of its true cost.

What Does an Hour of Downtime Really Cost?

The answer will be different for every facility.

When production stops, consider everything happening around that machine:

  • Lost production and throughput
  • Maintenance labor
  • Operator downtime
  • Overtime required to catch back up
  • Replacement parts
  • Scrap or damaged product
  • Expedited shipping
  • Missed delivery dates
  • Reduced equipment life
  • Customer dissatisfaction

A $500 component failure can easily create thousands of dollars in losses when everything surrounding that failure is considered.

Design the Failure Points Out

One way engineers can improve reliability is by reducing the number of components that can fail in the first place.

Many EXAIR products operate using compressed air with no moving parts.

There are no electric motors at the point of use. No bearings to replace. No belts to break. No gears to lubricate.

This design principle is used throughout products such as Super Air Knives, Air Nozzles, Air Amplifiers, Vortex Tubes, Cabinet Coolers, Line Vacs and E-Vacs.

Fewer moving components mean fewer opportunities for mechanical wear and unexpected failure.

Look Beyond the Purchase Price

The lowest initial purchase price isn’t necessarily the lowest-cost solution.

When evaluating equipment, consider its total cost of ownership:

Purchase Price + Installation + Maintenance + Replacement Parts + Downtime + Lost Production

A solution that costs slightly more initially but operates reliably for years can quickly become the less expensive option.

EXAIR has previously demonstrated this concept when comparing Cabinet Coolers with traditional refrigerant-based enclosure air conditioners. With no moving parts in the cooling device, Cabinet Coolers eliminate many of the motors and mechanical components that require periodic maintenance or replacement.

Reliability Has an ROI

Preventing downtime isn’t simply a maintenance objective.

It’s a productivity strategy.

Every failure point you can eliminate helps protect production, maintenance resources, delivery schedules and ultimately your bottom line.

When evaluating your next blowoff, cooling, conveying or vacuum application, don’t just ask:

“What does this solution cost?”

Ask:

“What could it cost us when this solution stops working?”

Sometimes the best way to reduce the cost of downtime is to design the potential failure out of the process entirely.

Jordan Shouse
Application Engineer
E: JordanShouse@exair.com
O: (513) 671‑3322
F: (513) 671‑3363
A: 11510 Goldcoast Dr Cincinnati OH 45249
www.exair.com

Find time on my calendar by scheduling a meeting here.

Designing for Reliability: The Advantage of No Moving Parts

Published on by Jordan T ShouseLeave a comment

In industrial environments, reliability often starts with simplicity. Every motor, bearing, belt, blade, or other moving part added to a system introduces another potential point of wear or failure. When engineers are designing equipment for long-term operation, one of the simplest ways to improve reliability is to reduce the number of moving parts.

That is a major advantage of EXAIR compressed air products.

Fewer Moving Parts, Fewer Failure Points

Traditional industrial equipment often relies on electric motors, fans, pumps, or mechanical components to create airflow, cooling, conveying, or vacuum. These solutions can work well, but they also introduce components that eventually require attention.

Bearings wear. Motors can overheat. Belts stretch or break. Filters clog. Mechanical components require lubrication and preventive maintenance.

Many EXAIR products accomplish similar industrial tasks using compressed air with no moving parts.

With no motor to burn out and no bearings or belts to replace, maintenance requirements can be dramatically reduced.

Reliability Across the Plant

The no-moving-parts design can be found throughout the EXAIR product line.

Super Air Knives and Air Nozzles provide engineered airflow for blow off, drying and cooling without fans or rotating blades.

Proper position on Super Air Knives

Vortex Tubes and Cabinet Coolers provide cold air for spot cooling and electrical enclosure cooling without refrigerants, compressors at the point of use, or moving components inside the cooling device.

Sub-zero air flow with no moving parts. 3400 Series Vortex Tubes from EXAIR.

Air Amplifiers entrain large volumes of surrounding air using a small amount of compressed air, providing high-volume airflow without an electric fan.

Model 120024 4″ Super Air Amplifiers are commonly used to exhaust welding smoke and fumes.

Line Vacs convert ordinary pipe or hose into a material conveying system without motors, bearings or mechanical pumps.

The Line Vac conveys scrap trim quickly and easily, and can be sized for most any product.

E-Vacs generate vacuum directly from compressed air with no moving components, making them well suited for applications where dependable vacuum generation is important.

Designing Maintenance Out of the Process

Maintenance teams spend a significant amount of time responding to equipment that has worn down, overheated, become contaminated, or simply reached the end of its service life.

Instead of asking, “How easy will this equipment be to maintain?”, engineers can sometimes ask a better question:

“Can we design the maintenance requirement out of the application?”

A compressed air product with no moving parts doesn’t eliminate every maintenance consideration. Compressed air still needs to be properly filtered and supplied at the appropriate pressure. But eliminating mechanical components can remove several common failure modes from the process entirely.

Reliability Isn’t Just About the Product

Unexpected equipment failure can mean much more than replacing a component. It can result in production downtime, lost product, emergency maintenance labor and missed delivery schedules.

That makes reliability a design consideration—not simply a maintenance consideration.

When evaluating a new blow off, cooling, conveying or vacuum application, consider not only whether a solution can perform the job today, but also what will be required to keep it performing years from now.

Sometimes the most reliable moving part is the one you never needed in the first place.

Jordan Shouse
Application Engineer
E: JordanShouse@exair.com
O: (513) 671‑3322
F: (513) 671‑3363
A: 11510 Goldcoast Dr Cincinnati OH 45249
www.exair.com

Find time on my calendar by scheduling a meeting here.

The Importance Of Planned Maintenance

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is a common phase that we’ve all heard. It’s also a recipe for disaster. Think about it:

  • Corrective maintenance is ALWAYS more expensive. An oil change in your car might set you back $50 and an hour or so, but when (not if) emulsified, contaminated oil causes your engine to seize, that’s a four (if not five) figure repair bill.
  • Corrective maintenance is also ALWAYS more inconvenient. “If you don’t schedule time for maintenance, your equipment will schedule it for you.” ’nuff said.

Anything with moving parts is going to live its best life if you maintain it properly, and your air compressor has a LOT of moving parts that are CONSTANTLY under a good deal of mechanical stress. Your compressor’s manufacturer almost certainly has a published list of recommended maintenance items, with a schedule of when they should be performed. While that list is going to vary, depending on the type of compressor you have, some of the more common items include:

  • Intake Filter: This is what removes environmental contamination from the air that the compressor is drawing in. When (not if) it gets dirty, your compressor works harder. That means higher power consumption, which means higher operating costs. It also means more heat is generated, which can wear machinery out WAY faster than it should.
  • Lubricating Oil: If your compressor is oil lubed, that oil needs to be changed periodically. The schedule for this is always going to be a certain number of hours of operation, or a certain period of time, whichever comes first. That first one is because the amount of particulate contamination is going to be roughly proportional to the amount of time the lubricated parts spend in motion. The latter is because oil just loses some of its critical lubricating properties over time.
  • Drive Equipment: The two main methods of connecting a motor to a compressor are direct drive shaft coupling, or a system of pulleys and belts. Making sure they stay aligned is critical to their operation. Depending on the nature of the drive, lubrication, tension, and physical condition are all important maintenance points as well.
  • Safety (Pressure Relief) Valve: This valve releases excess pressure if the pressure switch fails and the compressor keeps running. At the very least, this keeps your operating costs in line — the higher the discharge pressure, the higher the power consumption. And, worst case, it makes sure you don’t over pressurize the system. If your receiver tank blows up, that’s a bad day.
  • Receiver Tank Condensate Drain: While there are a number of automatic condensate drains available for industrial air compressors, many owners choose to manually drain condensate from the wet receiver. This should be done AT LEAST once a day, with some manufacturers recommending it more frequently than that. This is critical because standing water can corrode the tank from the inside over time. It can also lead to moisture carryover into the header, and it reduces the volume of available air storage in the tank.
  • Keep Clean To Keep Cool: Air compressors generate heat, both from the friction between the moving parts, and the compression itself (Gay-Lussac’s Law states that the pressure of a given mass of gas is directly proportional to its temperature as long as the volume is constant.) Some compressors are air cooled; others are water cooled. Whichever yours is, keep the heat transfer surfaces — like the fins on the air end housing (air cooled) or fins of the heat exchanger (water cooled) — clean & free of debris to maximize the heat transfer, keeping your compressor as cool as possible.

Again, these are just some of the more common maintenance items for an air compressor. If you want yours to live its best life, keep up with the manufacturer’s recommendations. Oftentimes, maintenance records are required for warranty consideration, should something fail. If you have questions about getting the most out of your compressed air system, give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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Any Machine Is A Smoke Machine If You Operate It Wrong Enough

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

While most folks think this old adage applies only to personnel not being familiar with the OPERATION of machinery, it’s also a reminder that ‘operating it right’ necessarily includes keeping up with regularly scheduled preventive maintenance. This includes pretty much anything with moving parts and components in a system that fluids might flow through. But today, I’m going to focus on certain parts of a typical industrial compressed air system. Failing to change oil in an industrial air compressor, for example, will “let the smoke out” just as fast (and sometimes faster) than anything a day-to-day operator can do to it.

The folks at Compressed Air Challenge are dedicated to (and this is right from their website) “helping you enjoy the benefits of improved performance of your compressed air system.” Their “Best Practices For Compressed Air Systems” stresses the importance of:

  • Proper maintenance as a means to ensure operational efficiencies and systems reliability.
  • Continuous checks for preventive maintenance items.
  • Implementing a detailed system maintenance program, including schedules of required maintenance, and records of its performance.

And that’s just from the introduction. It goes on to list the major components that should be included in this program: the compressor, heat exchanger surfaces, lubricant, lubricant filter, air inlet filter, motors, belts, and air/oil separators. The steps for properly maintaining these components range from standard housekeeping practices, to mechanical operations that are typically performed by trained operators, to services that might be best handled by qualified manufacturer’s representatives:

  • Cleaning: The air compressor itself, and any heat transfer surfaces, have to be kept clean & free of contaminants. Moving parts generate heat, and dirt, scale, corrosion, etc. are essentially insulation that’ll prevent that heat from being dissipated.
  • Lubrication: It’s critical to service the lubricant & any lubricant filtration per the manufacturer’s specifications. Again – not doing this is one of the best ways to “let the smoke out” of any machine.
  • Power transmission components: Regular inspection, including alignment checks, of belts & couplings is probably the 2nd best way (next to lubrication maintenance) of keeping the moving parts of the air compressor, and its drive, in good working order.
  • Intake filter: An air compressor will try to compress anything that’s drawn in with its air intake. If it pulls in particulate, that can damage internal surfaces, especially moving parts with tight tolerances to each other, like pistons & cylinders, scrolls & casings, rotary screws & chambers, impellers & volutes, etc., depending on the type of compressor. Plus, anything that makes its way into your compressed air header will also have a chance to foul up your pneumatic tools & devices, and get on anything that you use compressed air to blow off.
  • Motors & drives: Simply put, if you can’t turn the shaft of the compressor, it won’t compress any air. Periodic checks of electric motor windings, bearings, ‘soft start’ capacitors, phase converters, etc., are among the basic maintenance items that operators can inspect.

In addition to the compressor itself, the air distribution system should be properly maintained as well:

  • Filtration: The intake filter is there primarily to protect the compressor. Many times, the aforementioned tight tolerances between the moving parts in the air end will result in (hopefully) small amounts of particulate being carried over into the compressor discharge. There’s usually a main particulate filter, along with a dryer (for entrained moisture – the intake filter won’t do anything about that either), and possibly even a coalescing filter for oil & oil vapor. Good engineering practice calls for servicing those filters when the differential pressure across them reaches a certain value (5psid is a common one), but those elements, being relatively inexpensive, can also be replaced during regularly scheduled downtime as well.
  • Leak detection & repair: Leaks make the compressor run harder, so any reduction in the amount of compressed air leakage will, by definition, reduce the wear & tear on the compressor. EXAIR makes it easy to find them with the Ultrasonic Leak Detector.
  • Filtration Part 2: Don’t forget about contaminants that can enter the system downstream of the compressor, too. Iron pipe headers are subject to internal corrosion, which can result in rust particulate. Environmental pollution can enter if flanges or fittings are broken & made up during maintenance. Point of use filtration, like EXAIR Automatic Drain Filter Separators, can keep this debris (and any moisture that’s not removed by the compressor’s dryer) out of your pneumatic tools & products.
EXAIR has a number of Accessories and Optimization Products to help you get the most out of your compressed air system.

Compressed air is expensive enough without throwing in a bunch of easily preventable repair costs. Schedule time for maintenance, or it’ll schedule the time for you…and it may even send you a ‘smoke signal’ when it’s ready. If you’ve got questions about getting the most out of your compressed air system, we’ve got answers.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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