Pruftechnik Blog

maintenance

Innovators or Imitators?

by

ROTALIGNIt looks like we’ve struck a nerve in the laser shaft alignment market with our announcement of Adaptive Alignment systems.

All of a sudden, various forms of the word “adaptable” have been popping up on social media posts about laser alignment systems that do not possess Adaptive Alignment technology.

We at PRUFTECHNIK are glad to see others admit that adaptability is indeed a valuable must-have in laser alignment systems. We welcome them to the conversation.

Of course, it’s easy to use words like “adaptable” in a social media post. The hard part is actually engineering Adaptive Alignment capabilities into a laser alignment system. By that, we mean features that make adaptability happen during an alignment job, – such as single-laser technology and Active Situational Intelligence (see our white paper here).

Breakthrough engineering work is what separates innovators from imitators. PRUFTECHNIK—the undisputed world leader in laser shaft alignment—has continued to revolutionize with patented inventions that are realized in our Adaptive Alignment solutions.

But when many vendors freely use the word “adaptable,” how can maintenance practitioners separate true Adaptive Alignment systems that deliver higher precision with faster job completion from imitators that still operate in a basic way?

By asking, “How.”  How do systems claiming to be adaptable actually deliver Adaptive Alignment benefits?  Here are some specific questions:

  • Does the system include single-laser technology?
    If not, it cannot adapt to situations such as large misalignments. Common workarounds that add time and potentially compromise precision include recommendations to do “rough alignment” or “pre-alignment” before tackling the rest of the job.
  • Does the system deliver real-time feedback during, as opposed to after, the measurement?
    If not, it is not adapting to user needs.
  • Does the system automatically detect and eliminate coupling backlash as measurements are taken?
    Basic systems leave it up to the user to make sure backlash is not influencing the measurement.
  • Does the system include the ability to share measurements over the cloud to support team collaboration?
    If not, the technician is on his own at the machine, and the system is not adapting to teams that need collaborative capabilities
  • Is the system automatically aware of and can handle uncoupled shafts?
    A common installation-time need, Uncoupled Shaft Awareness, eliminates the manual positioning exercises commonly needed with basic alignment systems.

There are other questions that practitioners could and should ask before investing in a laser shaft alignment system. If you want to know what they are, don’t hesitate to contact us.

In the meantime, we at PRUFTECHNIK, a division of Fluke Reliability, welcome the marketplace validation of the value of Adaptive Alignment.

As with any advance that is imitated, sly usage of similar terms can make it difficult for users to separate the innovation from the imitation. We encourage maintenance leaders to learn about the key ingredients of Adaptive Alignment – which they can do here.

In the end, it’s not merely a battle over the meaning of the word “adaptable.” For maintenance teams charged with keeping their machines at peak performance while operating at peak efficiency themselves, Adaptive Alignment is one key to a successful future.

If you’d like to learn more about our Adaptive Alignment systems, we suggest digging into the information on this page or getting in touch with your PRUFTECHNIK sales representative today!

RFID capabilities in Adaptive Alignment tools are a godsend for technicians

by

When maintenance team members prepare to work on an asset, they often ask themselves “how can they tell if they have the correct alignment data for that machine?” It might seem like the answer should be obvious, but when many plants house an array of large machines, it’s not. And there’s no room for error in this situation.

Aligning a particular machine with the historical information of different assets not only wastes time but can have serious consequences, including impacting its performance. Thermal growth information, dimensions, and RPM values that are used to set coupling tolerance limits often vary and must be applied to the correct asset.

However, using RFID tags on assets in combination with Adaptive Alignment systems—such as the OPTALIGN touch, ROTALIGN touch and ROTALIGN touch EX—from PRUFTECHNIK can help solve these problems. Our systems are equipped with software to “read” asset tag data encoded with RFID, which stands for radio-frequency identification.

Get a complete alignment history of the asset

You’re probably familiar with RFID, a technology that uses electromagnetic fields to identify and track tags attached to objects automatically. It’s used for everything from access control and car key fobs to personal ID cards and asset tracking.

RFID identification software is integrated into PRUFTECHNIK systems, enabling them to automatically read a machine’s RFID tag and save relevant information. Companies that utilize these tags also provide their technicians with an alignment and maintenance history of the equipment that is helpful to all – but especially to new or inexperienced maintenance team members.

Technicians can view a complete alignment history of the asset with the connected ARC 4.0 (Alignment Reliability Center) PC software, track the alignment of individual assets over time (alignment trend), and investigate deeper causes of frequent misalignments. RFID also makes alignment data a dynamic condition monitoring parameter for asset management and condition-based maintenance programs.

Using the RFID reader and corresponding RFID tags:

  • Enables maintenance teams to clearly identify the equipment that needs to be aligned
  • Stores measurement results, machine templates, and RFID data into touch device asset data
  • Allows teams and engineers to quickly check the most recent alignment conditions
  • Automatically saves new alignment results

Built-in RFID technology is part of the powerful Adaptive Alignment feature set built into PRUFTECHNIK systems. To learn more, please visit this webpage to download our Adaptive Alignment white paper.

How adaptive alignment tools adapt to a range of situations and challenges

by

Machinery alignment scenarios are rarely the same. Using an easy shaft alignment tool that works for some simple jobs can introduce new errors on more complex projects. This unnecessarily complicates the alignment process, frustrating technicians, and driving up operational costs. Frequently, what maintenance leaders save with a cheaper system they lose in manual efforts and rework.

Enter adaptive alignment, a signature feature of PRUFTECHNIK laser shaft alignment systems.

This combination of software and hardware innovations enables maintenance teams to address any shaft alignment task, from the standard, daily, and straightforward alignment jobs to more complex and challenging tasks – such as aligning Cardan shafts, vertical flanged machines with right-angle gearboxes, or extensive machine trains with gearboxes.

Adaptive alignment systems contain Active Situational Intelligence (ASI), a software innovation with capabilities that enable the solutions to take on from the standard to complex and challenging tasks and complete them faster and with more accuracy than the many more basic solutions on the market.

Here are some of the adaptive alignment enhancements:

Multi-Factor Quality Enhancement

With this feature, the software detects and compensates for many factors that might negatively influence a measurement. It provides technicians with immediate feedback and allows even less experienced technicians to fetch high-quality measurements just by following the steps and tips displayed on the screen.

Uncoupled Shaft Awareness

When installing machines, the alignment should begin with uncoupled shafts to remove any residual forces in the machine train. But basic systems don’t have optimized measurement procedures for uncoupled shafts. Technicians must manually hold shafts to make sure both are at the same relative angle, then manually take the point, then manually move them. This method dramatically increases the risk of errors.

With adaptive alignment, uncoupled shafts can be in any position—the laser only needs to hit the detector. During the measurement, shafts can be freely moving while the adaptive system works out the angles and obtains the measurement. This capability delivers high ROI when teams are installing an asset because you get accurate results and required machine movements in the fastest possible time.

Virtual Move Simulator

Moving the machine is often the costliest part of alignment—and carries with it the risk of additional cost and time if it turns out to be the wrong move. Virtual Move Simulator (VMS) has saved technicians thousands of hours across many industries around the world by enabling them to model different options for a move, see the results, and refine choices before actually doing the physical movement. Read this separate blog post for more on VMS.

Live Move

Single-laser technology delivers rapid completion of alignment tasks while improving precision. Systems outfitted with this technology let technicians see corrections in real-time. They can view updated live results in both vertical and horizontal planes simultaneously across the full range of the sensor detection surfaces. With this capability, you avoid the limitations inherent to non-adaptive, dual-laser systems that have a line-over-length divergence problem.

Adaptive alignment can save time, improve accuracy, and offer numerous other advantages. Learn more about the adaptive alignment concept and feature set in PRUFTECHNIK systems by visiting our website.