Condition Monitoring/Predictive Maintenance

UK Company offers Handheld Predictive Maintenance System for Maintenance Engineers.

Pocket Vibra The new PocketVibra from UK company C-Cubed allows maintenance personnel to easily track bearing performance, identify bearing faults and check mechanical systems for misalignment, balance and hotspots.  
Previously the domain of outsourced consultants, new technology, new PDAs and some good old British innovation now permit service managers to analyse vibration issues on the spot - for themselves - and to automatically trend results to allow predictive maintenance.
Pocket VibrA is C-Cubed’s revolutionary vibration analysis and condition monitoring tool for predictive maintenance which will bring about a dramatic improvement in machine uptime.   Based around a PDA fitted with C-Cubed’s unique 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 by included FreeTrend software graphically to allow prediction of when categories are likely to go out of acceptable range.

“There is absolutely no reason whatsoever that manufacturing industry shouldn’t receive the many benefits of a predictive maintenance strategy that is already standard in other sectors” says C-Cubed’s MD, Dr Russell Sion, “High speed rotational machinery is core to manufacturing 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 have bundled their 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.

Historically cost has been a significant barrier to predictive maintenance, but as with almost every other market, from consumer electronics to automobiles, we expect (and are getting) much more for much less.  Ten years ago a decent vibration analyser with trending software would have required an initial outlay in excess of ?15k with a significant percentage of that as an annual license fee.  PocketVibrA from C-Cubed costs less than ?4500, is a one-off cost and includes both the vibration analyser and the PC trending and reporting software
http://www.c-cubed.co.uk

For more information please contact C-Cubed on 01256 895050 or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
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