COMPANY PROFILE
Condition monitoring savings not costs
Most hydraulic systems are contaminated with solid, liquid and gaseous particles, either generated externally or internally through fluids, component wear and tear, or just bad housekeeping.
These contaminates can cause system inefficiencies or system failures.
One of the first questions asked when presenting or training about condition monitoring products is “How much is this going to cost me?” Our response is always “How much is this going to save you”?
Geoff Grant, Product Manager at MP Filtri UK looks at a few points where investing in condition monitoring can help you save costs.
PARTICULATE CONTAMINATION
We know that around 70 – 90% of hydraulic breakdowns can be attributed to particulate contamination. That’s quite a high figure in anyone’s terms if we can reduce this figure by 30 – 40% then surely there is a cost saving there.
So what are the costs of these breakdowns? The biggest cost is system downtime especially in production. Add manpower to this, the time to fault find as well as remove and replace the component that has failed. So is the question really - how long can you afford not to have your production working?
Components are being subjected to contaminants before actual component failure, therefore losing component efficiency right from the start. Whereas at new, the system will run at full pressures, loads and speeds. When contamination is a problem, over a period of time these can all be effected by causing wear and cracks at critical component surface areas and therefore begin to lose the efficiency of the component and how well it operates.
Sometimes the component may even stop operating due to the blocking of small orifices by large contaminates. Typically we are looking at component clearances of 0.5 micron up to 50 micron. It doesn’t take much to block an orifice, to reduce or stop the flow of hydraulic media, hence stopping or slowing down the hydraulic application.
PRODUCT QUALITY
Costs can also be attributed to the product quality, scoring, wearing, and damaged components and finishes. Add all these together and the value can be quite high. How can we control this contamination problem and extend component life?
FIRST STEP
The first step is to add filtration. But which type of filtration do we install? Pressure, return, offline (Kidney loop) even a suction strainer. They all do a job but are they the right filter for the application?
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www.windenergynetwork.co.uk
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