Condition monitoring: modern answers - age-old methods, Part 1

June 2006 Maintenance, Test & Measurement, Calibration

There was a time when touch, smell and an ear to a screw driver were the sole means of condition monitoring. In the seventies, people with strange gadgets, reminiscent of something out of 'Space Odyssey' or even 'Ghost Busters', started walking around probing machines. In most of the cases these persons were using the early SPM instruments, which in their day was the only way to monitor rolling element bearings.

The very first instruments were really bulky, like the BAS10. These however quickly changed from 'man carrying' to handheld. (These were the days long before computers became the norm... late seventies early eighties.)

Most folk any way involved with maintenance in those days should remember the pistol grip and dials and head phones. The units saw widespread use - in fact there is a strong possibility that a visit to a large organisation and a question put to the older genre, would likely result in the unearthing of a unit from somewhere in the bottom of a cupboard. SKF was sufficiently impressed with these instruments to sell them branded as SKF instruments.

The instrument did not disappear. In South Africa its sales took a knock during the sanctions days and it was not marketed effectively by the then distributors. Its use stagnated and its customers were lured away by newer and more complicated instruments. However, in Europe SPM continued to thrive.

That was the history - but what about now? Is the shock pulse method still valid in today's high-tech environment, or is it an old dinosaur that has refused to accept its fate? In the next issue we will see why modern SPM instruments are in fact even more useful than they were many years ago.

For more information contact Vegter Condition Monitoring, 011 849 6876, [email protected]

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