Vibration Alarms Tip

May 13, 2009

If you ask most vibration analysts what they think about their current database’s Alarm Sets, you will find that most people are not happy with them or just don’t use them at all. Typically, these vibration databases contain Alarm Sets that were given to assets prior to taking actual vibration data on it at the conception of the program.

So why do these Alarm Sets go unchanged? One of the most common remarks to this question is that “I don’t have time to work on alarms, take condition monitoring data, and analyze the data”. This reason for NOT working on your Alarm Sets is exactly why you SHOULD work on your Alarm Sets. First & foremost, an analyst with properly designed alarms will not have to “analyze” every piece of data that has been taken on a piece of equipment. By having a meaningful Alarm Set that has been designed specifically for a given piece of equipment based on historical vibration data, all known fault frequencies will be targeted with their own alarm bands. With this one change to a database, not only will you be able to skim through your data faster (using Alarm Summary Reports to aid in finding “problem” machines), you will also find that many assets that are identical in make & model actually vibrate very differently.

Tip provided by Allen Bailey
IVC Technologies

Previous tip: Lack of Repeatability using a laser alignment system
Next tip: Seven Habits of Highly Effective Maintenance Organizations Habit 5

« Back to all maintenance tips

Comments (1)

This tip is right on.I have found that using the approach I learned from Technical Associates of Charlotte, evaluating the data finding averages , standard deviations and calculating your alarm bands and overall alarms based off of real data from your machines has paid off 10 fold.There are many advantages to taking the time to evaulate and calculate your alarms.One in particular is you find out how consistant your data collection practices are.
1) Posted 7:53 am, 14 May 2009 by Brian N Lutz