Monitoring

What is Condition Monitoring?
In today’s increasingly competitive marketplace, reduced maintenance costs and increased manufacturing output are expected without compromising production quality.

This high level of product quality can only be reached by implementing a proactive approach to machinery maintenance. This reduces machine down time through better maintenance planning and eliminating machine failure. It is achieved by monitoring the lubricant and machine condition and, where possible, controlling root cause factors that may accelerate wear resulting in machine failure. This is the underlying principle of proactive maintenance and it offers significant benefits in improved profitability, reduced environmental impact and reduced safety risks. Condition monitoring is critical to its successful implementation.

One of the major contributors to machine failure is contamination in the lubricant and hydraulic fluid. Monitoring particulate contamination in a lubricant enables condition monitoring experts to monitor one of the biggest root causes of machine failure. This allows corrective actions, such as the replacement of filters or servicing of the system, to resolve the issue before it manifests as a catastrophic failure.

However, solid contamination is only one cause of wear. Water within the oil can also be responsible for the initiation of failure. Once the water content in oil has exceeded the oil’s saturation point, free and emulsified water will be present. This will result in damage to the base oil, the additive package and to the machine. As with solid particulate monitoring, monitoring the moisture levels in a lubricant is a root cause focus that allows maintenance engineers to undertake corrective action before serious damage is caused.

The instruments we develop and manufacture enable condition monitoring engineers to reliably measure and trend these contaminants and to take corrective action as soon as possible to prevent long term damage