Do your fans or pumps have excessive vibration?
Are you replacing belts and bearings more often than you should be?
You may need Dynamic Balancing
What We Do
At Predictive Maintenance Diagnostics, we perform on-site dynamic balancing, or trim balancing in Maine and the surrounding states. This can only be done on equipment that has a rotational imbalance and excess vibration; it is not a cure all for mitigating all vibration problems. Prior to balancing a piece of equipment, vibration data is collected to determine whether or not there is a true imbalance. Symptoms of an imbalance may be caused by other factors such as looseness, worn bearings, poor foundation, or a specific resonance. It is important to correctly identify the issue as these can be just as detrimental to the equipment
How We Do It
When performing dynamic balancing it is necessary to either add or remove weight from a specific point on the rotating element that has the imbalance. This is done by a trial weight method that requires the machine to be started and stopped several times depending on the configuration of the machine. Some machines can be trim balanced quite easily with three or four starts and stops; other machines could require multiple starts and stops over a one or two day period.
Air handler fan wheels and vertical hollow-shaft pump motors are a couple of examples that are prime candidates where dynamic balancing can be very effective in reducing excessive vibration due to a running speed imbalance. When rotating equipment has excessive vibration due to a looseness condition or machine resonances that falls very close to the operating speed; on-site dynamic balancing is not the likely solution. Equipment operating on a variable frequency drive can also be problematic since the operating speed can vary greatly over a speed range that may include a resonance frequency within the operating range.
December 8, 2018
During my 48 years in the rotating equipment service industry throughout Maine and New England, I have received thousands of telephone calls only after equipment had […]