May 2022 Volume 4

MAINTENANCE

Project Managing for Major Equipment Rebuilds and Upgrades By Jeff Fredline

Often you can save time and money by considering repairing, rebuilding, or remanufacturing your existing equipment. As a first step, it is important to understand the difference in terminology

Critical Inspection Items for a Typical Mechanical Forging Press or Machine Presses are designed to provide a perfectly square environment for the tooling. • Measure the die space for the tooling to determine if it is square on BDC. • If not square, why? • Are the hard plates loose or worn? • Are the way surfaces on the ram and gibbing in good condition and set properly? • Are there worn bushings which are creating the parallelism issue under load in the die space? • Howmuch vertical lift clearance is there? Repeatable Force. What components contribute to the repeatable force characteristics of your machine? • Are there broken components such as the crankshaft, wrist pin, upper connection, bull gear and clutch assemblies? • Is there a resistance within the machine such as a loss of lubrication which causes a rotational resistance? Frame/Component Strength to resist the production loading of the process. • Are you seeing variations in the tonnage monitoring equipment underload? • Are there cracks or gaps in the frame structure under load? • Does the frame move during the machine cycle? • Have you inspected the machine foundation to ensure that the machine frame is properly supported under load? Your inspection process then needs to examine eachmachine against the above criteria. Once you have established what the overall condition of your machine is, let us consider what the required working scope might be to put your machine in excellent condition. To better understand the process, the following working scope and explanations will assist the reader to better understand and manage the rebuilding process. Each of the following items represents a step in the process of determining the formal working scope. Send crew to customer’s plant to disassemble, clean and inspect your press as follows. • Remove ram assembly with upper connection. • Remove counterbalance cylinders.

between the (3) different processes. 1. Repairing Your Equipment

Is defined as fixing the specific problems that you have determined are necessary to make the machine function properly. However, there may be additional unidentified issues that may arise after initial repairs have been completed. 2. Rebuilding Your Equipment Rebuilding may include the entire machine or a specific assembly such as the ram assembly, clutch assembly, brake assembly, etc. Typically, the rebuilding process returns the equipment to a good working condition in compliance with proper operational clearances. 3. Remanufacturing Your Equipment This process reworks each of the components of the machine and returns them to their original or better condition. There might be components or designs that are obsolete, and these are upgraded or replaced. Remanufacturing also includes items such as new electrical, lubrication, hydraulic and pneumatic systems. The Process As you probably have been using the equipment in your operations day-to-day you may have a basic understanding of what some of the issues are with the condition of your machine. The best method is to do some preliminary inspection work first, thus allowing you to establish an accurate working scope. The initial inspection should provide a complete overview of the condition of your machine. This inspection can be performed internally if your personnel have the proper equipment and training to fully understand the condition of your equipment. The importance of complete and accurate data is critical as the data becomes the basis for defining the working scope. I recommend that you have an experienced professional organization perform the inspection and share its findings and recommendations with your company.

• Remove clutch assembly. • Remove bull gear assembly. • Remove brake assembly. • Remove main bushing carriers LH and RH.

FIA MAGAZINE | MAY 2022 20