Condition Monitoring

• What is Condition Monitoring?
• Criticality of Condition Monitoring for vbelts and pulley drives
• Vbelt condition monitoring systems
• Vbelt Condition Monitoring case studies
• Benefits of Condition Monitoring
• Other Condition Monitoring techniques
• Further information about v belt condition monitoring

What is Condition Monitoring?
Condition monitoring (or CM) is the process of industrial machinery monitoring. As the name suggests, the condition monitoring approach is based on regular, or increasingly continuous, monitoring and analysis of parameters within a machine and its critical components.

Condition monitoring enables an understanding of a machine’s ‘health’ to be developed, so that corrective maintenance activities can be scheduled on an as-and-when required basis, in order to prevent machine component deterioration leading to failure in service.

Criticality of Condition Monitoring for vbelts and pulley drives:
It is a common misconception that vbelts and pulley drives are designed to accommodate a relatively generous degree of misalignment and imprecise tensioning. This is absolutely not the case! Pulley drives in modern industry are precision assets that need to be correctly maintained to ensure that they operate within exacting tolerances.

Vbelts are susceptible to ‘belt-slip’ whereby changes in the tensioning of the vbelt across the span of the drive pulleys leads to slippage of the vbelt in the pulley sheaves.

There are acceptable tolerances for vbelt slippage but once these tolerances are exceeded, vbelt slip leads to:

• Accelerated wear of the vbelt leading to belt burn-off and failure during operation
• Increased wear on pulley sheaves
• Increased power consumption to achieve drive output

Condition monitoring of vbelt drives using a vbelt monitoring system will alert you to belt looseness and enable maintenance technicians to take corrective action to prevent energy inefficiencies, power loss and belt burn-out.

Vbelt condition monitoring systems:
The SENSSLIP® range of vbelt condition monitoring systems is an affordable, industry-leading solution for the continuous monitoring of critical drives and the prevention of energy losses and production downtime.

• SENSSLIP® provides a visual colour-coded LED status alert to provide an at-a-glance assessment of vbelt slippage. SENSSLIP® can also be configured to provide alerts to mobile phone via SMS, it can be linked into a site’s PLC or SCADA asset management system, and can even be wired into a klaxon.
  
• SENSSLIP® MAINTENANCE is a monitoring system designed to help the busy maintenance engineer schedule belt maintenance. SENSSLIP® MAINTENANCE continuously monitors vbelts so that you don’t have to.
  
• SENSSLIP® ENERGY is a monitoring system designed to indicate energy loss due to dynamic slippage of the belts. It alerts maintenance operatives to vbelts that are operating out of acceptable tolerance levels so that corrective action can be taken and energy efficiency can be quickly restored.
  
• SENSSLIP® CRITICAL system - designed for critical transmission systems to avert catastrophic failure and damage due to belt breakage. In the event of vbelt failure, SENSSLIP® CRITICAL will automatically shut down the drive motor and alert you to the failure, thereby preventing catastrophic damage.

Vbelt Condition Monitoring Case Studies:

• Corus reduce Energy Wastage thanks to v belt Condition Monitoring System
• Yorkshire Water Utilise SensSystems v belt Condition Monitoring System In Pursuit Of Operating Excellence

Download the SENSSLIP® v belt condition monitoring system brochure for further information about the benefits of continuous v belt monitoring.

Benefits of Condition Monitoring:
Condition monitoring has significant performance and efficiency benefits over the traditional preventative-based maintenance approach.

Regular or scheduled maintenance intervals are typically based on an hours-run basis, whereby a machine is overhauled and components renewed on a routine basis. This is called Preventative maintenance – by definition, ‘perishable’ components are renewed on a regular basis with the expectation that this will prevent these components reaching the end of their lifespan and causing a failure in service. Maintenance intervals are usually prescribed by machine and component manufacturers – irrespective of whether components or lubricants require renewal.

Other Condition Monitoring techniques:

• Vibration Analysis (VA), particularly of rotating machinery and elements
• Thermography – thermal imaging to detect friction heat in machinery of overloading in electrical assets
• Oil Analysis (sometimes referred to as ‘tribology’) – analysis of industrial lubricants to monitor and diagnose levels of contamination or chemical change
• Ultrasonics – high frequency analysis technique used particularly for monitoring of high frequency vibration signals and leaks in compressed air systems

Further information about v belt condition monitoring:

SENSSLIP® range of v belt condition monitoring systems are designed and manufactured by SensSystems Ltd.

Please contact us for sales, technical and installation information regarding condition monitoring systems for vbelts and belt drives, or to discuss the benefits of vbelt condition monitoring in a specific industrial application.

Tel: +44(0) 1142 541241 or alternatively, Email: info@senssystems.com