Vibration Monitoring a Main Air Handler [Success Story]

Challenge: Main Air Handling Unit in Boiler Room Exhibiting Issues

The main air handling unit in the boiler room of a local corporate building was exhibiting potential issues. The employees could not immediately identify the source of the problem and needed to spend costly time and resources on hiring a maintenance technician to solve the issue. The manager of the building wanted to find a long-term solution so that they could identify maintenance issues with accuracy and in a timely manner.

Solution: Wireless Vibration Monitoring

To solve the company’s need for predictive maintenance, they turned to Banner’s wireless vibration monitoring solution. The need called for the company to mount three wireless vibration sensors on the system for further monitoring in the boiler room. Banner’s vibration machine learning algorithm was used on the DXM wireless gateway to baseline and automatically set alert thresholds for each of the three sensors.

After three months of consistent vibration levels, workers observed a clear rise in vibration levels on one of the pillow block bearings that was being monitored. A maintenance technician was called in to replace the bearing before catastrophic failure occurred. Upon replacement and inspection of the disassembled bearing, the technician saw spalling on the inner race of the bearing, as shown in the first graph.

Before preventative maintenance

The data was sent from the DXM wireless gateway to the Banner Cloud Data Services (CDS) website, where it could be visualized from any web browser and gave custom email alerts for hands-off monitoring. The first set of graphs above from the bannercds.com website showed that the rise in vibration over the three-month period and the second set of graphs below show the immediate reduction in vibration from the newly installed bearing. After the new bearing was installed, a new vibration baseline and alerts were generated by the machine learning algorithm for ongoing monitoring of the air handling system.

By identifying the mechanical failure early, the scheduled replacement prevented an emergency visit that would have cost two to three times the normal price of maintenance. Without it, there may have been additional damage to the air handling system, causing required workers to stay out of the office until a solution was found, and resulting in added costs and reduced worker production.

after bearing replacement

Key Benefits:

DXM Series

Complete, End-to-End IIOT Solutions

Build on the features and capabilities offered by the DXM by using our Connected Data Solutions cloud software. Powerful tools built into the software make it easy to access and analyze data from each device in the network, establish performance baselines and thresholds, identify trends and issues, and make better decisions about your equipment and assets.

Vibration Monitoring Series

Prevent Unplanned Downtime

Monitoring RMS velocity and other vibration characteristics on equipment can help identify problems caused by imbalanced, misaligned, loose, or worn parts before they cause additional damage, failure, and unplanned downtime. Machine performance can be tracked over time, so users can make more informed decisions about maintenance and anticipate failures before they occur. It can have a very fast ROI on the sensing equipment due to the avoidance of unplanned downtime.

Simple Setup Saves Time and Costs

Set up your vibration and monitoring solution in a few simple steps: plug in the box, configure the radios, install the sensors on your equipment, and begin collecting data. Performance baselines and thresholds are automatically generated, and no programming is required. Use the HMI touchscreen to create visualization tools and view the data.

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