A constant Bearing Maintenance problem we see in production environments is the over-greasing bearings, over greasing is in many cases worse than under-greasing.
Usually, this causes quite a stir in the engineering teams, and on our social accounts, this video we posted to our Tiktok account got over 110,000 views and 131 comments, and the arguments in the comments went on for quite some time.
The fact is there is a lot of miss information in the industry surrounding bearing maintenance and specifically lubrication.
This is because too much grease in the bearing housing causes issues with how the bearing rotates and can cause the individual balls to stop rotating, which can lead to flat spots.
Another problem that over-greasing creates is popping the bearing seals, this can lead to contamination getting into the bearing which will lead to failure.
These are a couple of reasons why a Planned Maintenance program can actually lead to a reduction in reliability, you may be performing maintenance on your assets, and you may also be hitting your targets in terms of getting the PMs complete in the timescale allowed.
The problem is those Planned Maintenance tasks could actually be causing Bearing Maintenance and reliability issues (which is quite common) then you will ultimately be doing more harm than good.
This is quite common in manufacturing; the focus is on getting a planned maintenance schedule in place, then hitting the targets by performing those tasks.
There is often not a lot of thought put into making sure that the tasks being completed are adding value to the performance and reliability of the equipment; which ultimately is the whole point in the first place of putting these planned maintenance tasks in.
How Should Bearing Maintenance be Performed?
So how should you be performing maintenance on your bearings?
One way is to use the technology that is available by utilising Condition Based Monitoring techniques.
These techniques will enable you to get data about your bearings, motors, gearboxes, etc, and build a picture of what is actually happening with your equipment.
With bearings in particular you can use ultrasound technology to effectively let the bearing tell you if it needs grease or not.
One really useful tool is the grease caddy by UE Systems, which combines ultrasound with a grease gun so you listen to the bearing before applying grease, if used right by trained Engineers this can increase the performance of your bearings and reduce failures from over-greasing.
You can also use Thermography; thermographic cameras such as the ones from Flir systems are extremely useful in many maintenance tasks where heat is a failure mode; most commonly used in electrical control panels to identify hot spots in the control gear.
Thermal cameras can also be used as an indicator of bearing failure modes, heat will increase as the friction increases in a bearing; therefore monitoring your bearings on a regular basis will show you the changes in heat that can then be trended to show problems.
Identifying these problems early enough is the key to stopping problems and increasing the reliability of the factory assets.
Another common way to monitor bearings is vibration analysis, there are a plethora of options on the market that enable the Reliability Engineer to monitor vibration.
Some of these Vibration Analysers that assist you in Condition Monitoring can be fixed in place and communicated to a database via Bluetooth.
Such as the one below the I-Alert by From I-alert.com The fixed-in-place vibration analysers help you to get readings from equipment that is not easily accessible and therefore not suitable for a hand-held vibration analyser.
The one pictured below is in one of our customer’s sites, these units have been pre-installed by the OEM of the Process Kitchen.
Another type of vibration analyser is the handheld route based option; such as the Machine Sentry MSM-1 by AVT reliability.
By using these sensors and getting Condition Based Data from your bearings you can increase the usable life and create a successful Bearing Maintenance program.
If you want assistance in creating a bearing maintenance program or speak to someone about how to improve the reliability of your Assets give us a shout by using the contact us page.
If you want to see the video we referred to at the beginning of this article, here it is…