November 2022 Volume 4

MAINTENANCE

The Importance of SystemMonitoring The following items should be monitored on a regular basis to ensure that the best possible conditions are maintained. Compressed Air System • Condition of oil in the system. Send out monthly oil samples to be analyzed for contamination. • Benchmark pressure readings. • Check air dryers and drain all water from the system on a daily basis. • Monitor drive motor-Amp draw. Lubrication Systems on Presses, Shears and Other Equipment • Condition of lubricant in the system. • Change out filters on a regular basis. • Monitor for broken lines or fittings. • Monitor for changes in system pressure. Electrical System for Presses, Shears and Other Equipment • Do all controls operate properly? • Are there any damaged indicator lights? • Air pressure switch function. • Lighting, fans, and other auxiliary equipment. Die Space Condition There are a number of systems that need to be monitored. As you determine what needs to be monitored and create work instructions for each area, you will soon find the benefits of proper maintenance management. Remember, the goal is to determine what can shut down production, list the items and then design a program to eliminate the items on the list, or at least minimize them. Jeff Fredline Sales Engineer MECO Email: fredline.jeff@gmail.com • Parallelism in the die space. • Tooling clamping systems.

TeamTwo: The Emergency Response Team • Maintains readiness to respond at the first sign of mechanical or electrical system failures. • Symptom identification, this is the symptom, what are the probable causes. • Be ready to act as quickly as possible to correct the situation and restore production. Mechanical and Electrical Team I have worked in manufacturing for many years and fully understand what happens during day-to-day operations of a plant. When production is down, throughput ceases and the stress level raises dramatically. However, if you’re prepared, you need not fear, just move forward according to your plan. Spare parts, proper planning and training can get production up and running again as soon as possible. Perhaps the most important step is after the crisis has passed perform a root cause analysis so that the accurate cause of the down time incident can be determined and dealt with to eliminate future incidents. Analyzing where we are really at provides insight in the planning process. While working as the maintenance manager at a large forging plant in Michigan, we determined that a major source of down time was the reliability of our part conveyors within the work cells. We undertook a rebuilding program and on the weekends for a time, we rebuilt one conveyor each weekend. We worked to standardize the components between the conveyors so that we could stock the needed replacement parts and eliminate the need for multiple conveyor parts for different conveyors. This process eliminated the issues with unplanned downtime due to conveyor failure. After eliminating the conveyor issues, we went to the next most frequent issue which were the controls on the induction heating system. After a lot of work, we were able to solve this issue also and greatly increase the work cell throughput. Some problems are more complex than others. The conveyor problems were uncomplicated mechanical issues. Other problems will be more complex and require more research. The importance of early discovery of both mechanical and electrical systems cannot be overstated. The goal of every maintenance department is to bench mark the condition of the production equipment which in turn allows us to move toward predictive maintenance. An example of this would be a 2500 ton forging press. If you inspect and record the vertical lift clearance every six months, when you inspect in December, your total lift clearance (obtained by exhausting the counterbalance air pressure, placing a hydraulic jack under the centerline of the ram front to rear, and left to right. Measuring with a dial indicator measure the total amount of vertical movement) is .080”. When you inspect the same machine in June or July of the next year you see an increase to .112”. You can then use this information to schedule bushing replacement within the next 6-12 months. This also serves as a warning to verify proper lubrication and check the lubricant in the machine for contamination.

FIA MAGAZINE | NOVEMBER 2022 31