WearDetect Oil Debris Sensor Real-time ferrous wear detection – discover machinery failures faster An introduction to Wear Debris Monitoring in the industrial marketplace gillsc.com Issue 2 © 2021 Gill Sensors & Controls Limited

An introduction to Wear Debris Monitoring in the industrial marketplace Modern Marketplace Today a modern condition based monitoring (CBM) system may consist of many facets. Historically this space has been dominated by vibration monitoring, although this technology is now dropping market share when compared to other technologies. The largest gain in market share is oil sensing, which includes wear debris monitoring systems. 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Source – Bureau Veritas SMRP 2019 One possible explanation for this is that operators are waking up to the fact that they need...

> Find out how Gill can help improve your Predictive Maintenance Strategy Technology History Wear debris monitoring and wear debris analysis was first developed during the 70’s and early 80’s. The technology came to the fore in the market place in the 1990’s and has been solidly established ever since. Modern processing and sensing techniques have allowed the proliferation of new smaller, low power, sensors which industry is adopting as the new standard, at an ever increasing rate. Operational Theory The principle is simple, contacting metal surfaces will start to break down, even at the most...

An introduction to Wear Debris Monitoring in the industrial marketplace Offline Analysis The practical approach is to tap off a small sample of lubricant into a perfectly clean sample bottle, to avoid cross contamination, and send it to a lab for analysis. The drawback is that this sample, usually less than 0.5% of the total system lubricant volume, must contain debris representative of the whole lubrication system and overall condition of the machine. Therefore, the location from which the oil sample is taken, is critical to getting a good result. Your lab will then examine this sample and provide...

> Find out how Gill can help improve your Predictive Maintenance Strategy Wear rate In the image below we see a typical “bath tub” curve as an asset moves from brand new to failure. There will always be a period of high wear at the start of the life of the asset, or after a major rebuild, as the gear teeth polish against each other. This is known as running in or bedding in. After the initial running in period “normal” wear will occur. The critical point any operator needs to catch is the upward inflection of the line in the graph above, at the point marked A. Real time sensors are crucial in...

An introduction to Wear Debris Monitoring in the industrial marketplace the duty cycle on a particular machine has increased. At the very minimum, a good hard look at a piece of equipment should be performed during the next planned shutdown. Approaching maintenance in this way can bring huge cost savings on all types of gearboxes where process is critical. For powerful 2 point, real time analysis we can overlay wear debris and vibration data in a complementary manner. In summary, catch everything, plan actions ahead and hit your uptime targets. Any online/real time sensor is not a whole oil lab...

Case Study: Wear Debris Monitoring Motor and gearbox drive system The Background April 2020 – Gill Sensors & Controls is proud to be part of the condition based monitoring program for one of the USA’s original and most successful manufacturers of Aerospace components. This company can boast all the major aerospace and defence contractors on their list of satisfied customers, including NASA for whom they manufactured components for a space program. In order to maximise the economic efficiency of the equipment the company operates it is essential for the plant to be running 24 hour per day. As...

Case Study: Wear Debris Monitoring The Application In one particular application, WearDetect Oil Debris Sensor was deployed on a steel grinding mill. This critical part of the manufacturing process operates 24 hours per day, however, the large planetary gearbox that the sensor is installed on is running at 50% duty cycle due to material loading/unloading times. Quite often this piece of equipment will operate for 6 months to 1 year before being stopped for scheduled maintenance tasks. The company has twin machines in order to manage the demand and maintain output, albeit reduced, when either...

> Find out how Gill can help improve your Predictive Maintenance Strategy During testing, the operators noted that the ‘fine’ channel on the Gill device was registering the collection of some debris. For maximum accuracy, Gill recommends performing a custom calibration. In this case, however, the operators used the out-of-the-box settings which suited their application. The 4-20mA signals from the sensor are read and displayed in the plant room however, the operator chose the premium version of the sensor with the local coloured LED display for a quick reference at the site of the gearbox. The...

Case Study: Wear Debris Monitoring The Value Using the combined data from WearDetect Oil Debris Sensor and vibration sensors this operator was able to make the call to reject the gearbox before it was installed onto the main grinding mill. Imagine, if you will, a scenario whereby either of the gearboxes operating the grinding machines fail or require a major service. If the third rotation gearbox had been switched in whilst carrying a fault, the company could very quickly be left with only one operational gearbox out of the three that it owns. The company would also have lost a significant amount...