Plant Services - September 2007 - (Page 56) Reliability Automation absolutely crippled. So, the same solution was applied. The lathes became as reliable in summer as in winter. Deere applied a lot of air-conditioners during the next few years. But, thinking in terms of FISHing, the company then realized that, in most cases, increased air flow past electronics in a well-sealed cabinet is a better solution than an air-conditioner. The reason is that air conditioners introduce contaminated make-up air, they require additional power and they must be maintained. The next stress hardening discovery came when six Lucas boring machines with GE-550 NC controls frequently malfunctioned or failed because of oxidation and factory fume buildup on circuit board pins and other friction connectors. The techs were told, “Don’t remove and replace a bad circuit board without first giving it the magical stare.” Technicians have the power, if they stare at both sides of a board, to have fixed it in about 70% of the cases. Just put it back into the machine and see how well it works. Of course technicians More resources at www.PlantServices.com/thismonth Hydraulic fluids - “Beyond price per gallon” Hydraulic cleanliness - “Hydraulic maintenance” Fluid degradation - “Lubricant RCA” Instrument performance - “There’s gold in them thar signals” Fluid purity - “Control contamination in hydraulic fluids” For more, search www.PlantServices.com using the keywords cabinet, hydraulic and corrosion. Wireless Condition Monitoring Solutions Alarming & Trending Long Battery Life High Frequency Spectrum or Time Waveform Small Size Tethered Wireless Accelerometers True Wireless Accelerometers Wireless Sensor Repeaters Wireless Sensor Network to Ethernet Bridge Techkor Instrumentation 1-800-697-4567 wirelesskit@techkor.com www.techkor.com 56 www.PLANTSERVICES.com realize it wasn’t the “magical stare” but the reseating of the board that rubbed off oxidation, residue or corrosion and reestablished good connections. Here we are again, at the interface between the board and the machine, seeing more than occasional problems. The introduction of the military’s JTP (joint test protocol) 02-EC-001-P8 states “Corrosion of electrical connectors is one of the leading causes of malfunctions in military electrical systems.” (See www.armycorrosion.com.) After year or two of experimenting with different oxidation inhibitors and contact cleaners, a couple of solutions were found that would both clean the oxidation off and prevent (harden) it from coming back again. The more widely you apply these, the more impressed you become. It noticeably eliminates problems and reduces unscheduled downtime. You also can use oxidation conditioner sponge modules inside well-sealed cabinets to treat screw-terminal strips, friction connections and other hardware. This is one $47 piece of FISHing gear that can easily catch more than $47,000 in increased uptime. Going down the list of stressors listed above, we learned how to keep control cabinets dirt free, how to harden them against voltage transients and current surges. We learned that removing contaminants from hydraulic oil was better than changing the oil. Now, many companies have applied FISHing methods on more than 1,000 automated control systems and machine tools to gain “like new” reliability and availability from 15 year to 30 year old machines and to maximize uptime and equipment life for new machines as well. Companies that go FISHing for reliability, normally minimize mechanical downtime and hydraulic downtime as well as computer and electronic controls downtime as was indicated at the beginning of this article. Howard Cooper is president of Amemco in Troy, Mich. Contact him at hcooper@amem co.net or (801) 859-2073. September 2007 http://www.armycorrosion.com http://www.PlantServices.com/thismonth http://www.PLANTSERVICES.com http://www.techkor.com http://www.techkor.com http://www.PLANTSERVICES.com
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.