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Developing a Motor Bearing Regreasing Strategy
KC Hyland, Reliability Technician, BP Canada
Chemicals
The first thing that I would want to do is get the Reliability
Department together and discuss the scenarios that brought them
to the conclusions not to grease bearings in electric motors.
I would then send them to a training course on Electric Motor
Reliability.
I would evaluate the MTBF on the motors and take a look at the
latest vibration analysis reports looking for motors with the
highest bearing frequencies. I would make a list of motors that
were showing cage frequencies and flag them as bearings to beware
of when applying grease.
I have had bearings fail right on the spot when they were showing
cage frequency and grease was applied. These motors should be
shut down and repaired ASAP. When the bearing cage fails it can
be very damaging to the shaft and rotor. I would than purchase
an ultrasonic grease gun and than send one or two of the mechanics
on a greasing and oiling training seminar.
The next step would be to have the people that were just sent
to training sit down with the rest of the maint team and share
the learning of what they have just been taught. I would hope
that by allowing the peers to come up with the proper solution
as a team that there would be better buy in by all.
I would set up one or two of my maint staff as oilers and make
sure that the new program gets off to a good start. I would pick
someone who really believes in preventive maint program to take
charge of the program. I would make sure what grease has been
put in the bearings during assembly and try to find the best compatible
grease that we could get.
I would make sure that all motors that can be are purged of the
old grease by following proper greasing techniques. I would than
set up a PM program based on the recommendation of the motor vendor
and make the rest of the plant team is aware that there may be
a few failures at first as some of the bearings may have been
at the end of there life already. I would check to see what bearings
they have changed to sealed for life and make sure that there
was at least good reasoning and judgment made on the motors that
were changed over.
I would recommend changing them back to greasable bearings and
set up a good greasing program monitoring the MTBF. After a couple
of years there would be no doubt in my mind that the MTBF will
have greatly improved. Also there would be a noticeable decrease
in energy consumption and the vibration gSE will have improved
significantly.
I would than make sure that all the reports of improvements and
successes were shared with all team members and management. With
the money we have saved I would use small portion of it to take
the plant team out for a victory celebration. With the remaining
money I would set up some good training programs and get the plant
on a world class reliability program that would make them proud
to be apart of.
See other responses
to this Readers Challenge.
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