High Reliability of Air Screw Compressors by Simultaneous Monitoring with VIBGUARD Compact
PRUFTECHNIK Condition Monitoring utilized with VIBGUARD compact to develop a new Condition Monitoring System for simultaneous and continuous data collection.
PRUFTECHNIK Inc., based in Philadelphia, USA joined forces with AstraZeneca in Frederick, MD for a field test for performing extensive function tests before the product launch.
AstraZeneca provided a two stage oil-free rotary screw air compressor which the reliability engineers monitor already with the PRUFTECHNIK FFT-Analyzer VIBXPERT II. That gave a good opportunity to compare the vibration date and to check it for plausibility.
The screw air compressor is a very important part in the production chain of AstraZeneca´s pharmaceutical products. Therefore two of these compressors are available and work in alternating operation. The data was transmitted via wireless modem to the PRUFTECHNIK Cloud Server and data access was set up for AstraZeneca and the PRUFTECHNIK Cloud server.
The compressors ran in two operating states “unloaded” and “loaded” with constant speed. The VIBGUARD® compact received a hardwired trigger signal to classify the data into these two different states.
This was very critical because the vibration behavior is different between the “loaded” and “unloaded” state and only the “unloaded” data were periodical
The test period was six weeks. The companies tested different measurement configurations. Because of the high gear mesh frequencies and their harmonics of approximately 10 to 40 kHz we used the maximum FFT bandwidth of 50 kHz and configured time signals with a sufficient high sample rate to be able to recognize the individual gear meshes.
Through the excellent support of the responsible reliability engineer Thomas Harris, the field test was completed with a positive result.With VIBGUARD® compact PRUFTECHNIK has developed a new very convincing Online monitoring System for complex applications. We are planning to use this handy system for temporary monitoring tasks and trouble shooting, says Harris.
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