Pre-packaged Food Producer

Industry: Process & Manufacturing
Services: Fan Balancing, Route-based VA, Cloud-based Reporting
Location: United Kingdom
Cost-Saving: Prevented unplanned downtime

The Overview

Our engineer detected an increase in vibration on a critical fan.

The Situation

We provide routine monthly condition monitoring services for a food manufacturer that specialises in the production of pre-packaged meals.

The main objective of the outsourced condition monitoring programme is to highlight equipment issues early to the site maintenance department, allowing maintenance activities to be scheduled during planned shutdowns.

The Challenges

An increase in vibration on a critical fan was identified during routine data collection and analysis. The attending engineer recommended remedial action.

The Solution

During a planned outage, our engineers inspected the fan and found the fan impellor was badly corroded and that the fan housing was wearing thin. Loose material on the fan was removed and the fan was in-situ balanced. Initial data taken from the belt driven fan, which is inaccessible when online, showed high levels of 1x fan shaft vibration.

These readings confirmed that the high levels of fan speed vibration seen on the external motor readings was due to fan imbalance.

The Results

Due to the condition of the fan housing, it was decided not to attempt to remove the bolts to open the inspection hatch and instead balance the fan by attaching the trial weights to the impeller where it was more accessible. See Fig 1.

Figure 1: Non-drive end of the fan shaft

The balance procedure was then carried out which resulted in a 44g weight being attached to the impeller to correct the imbalance. Following the balance procedure, the fan was restarted, and a final set of readings taken from the fan. See table 1 and table 2.

Table 1 - Initial readings before balance