I would like to share with everyone an instance that came up with my partner and I during a time we were setting up a data base and rounds on critical machinery for monitoring at a large and reputable company. While we were making up rounds and setting up monitoring points we were looking around at all the machinery and inspecting the surrounding equipment like we always do. During this we found a large bull gear that operates several other gears that rotate bottle and can conveyers. This bull gear had dropped down and was rubbing against an electrical box and was about to come off the shaft it was on. We contacted the maintenance manager and showed him the situation and he set up a schedule to immediately repair this. This situation if not found would have caused significant damage to other equipment and the possibility of electrical shorting into the electrical box. This could have affected employee safety, and a longer downtime at a much greater cost for parts, labor and production loss. (This bull gear was about 5 feet diameter).

My tip is to always take the time to look around at the conditions surrounding the machines and to watch out for tunnel vision, looking just at the points of inspection and data acquisition. Visual and listening along with data collection will help in the aide of analysis and there are situations where vibration or other predictive methods cannot find what a good quick visual can find. This is something I feel should always take place while running your rounds or routes and sometimes it is hard to remember how important these are. Time needs to be allowed for this and notes should be taken as we all know. In this case we didn't hesitate in contacting the manager right then as safety was a great concern. Remember that, listening, visual and notes can aid a great deal in the analysis of what is going on in the machinery especially if someone else is doing your analysis.

Reader tip provided by Joseph Dailey Sr., Victoria Texas

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