Ballbar data will quantify faults in the machine center such as servo mismatch, stick-slip error, straightness of the axes, lateral play, backlash, reversal spikes, circularity error, scale, and machine geometry. Each of these conditions can be trended over time.
Condition Monitoring in a Pandemic
Early 2020, who could have imagined all the changes that were coming to our lives and businesses. The COVID-19 public health emergency has upended many of the usual patterns of our days in nearly every area of life you can name. That includes predictive maintenance...
Online Condition Monitoring
How many times has your company had a great idea for making a big and exciting change—and then had to abandon the idea because you just can’t spare the time from your day-to-day operations to make a substantial adjustment to your work? You might even be confident that...
Weathering the Storm
We did not know what was coming to our community on August 10, 2020. The day started out as normal and the forecast was not unusual in any particular way. Then, around 12:30 pm the sky got dark, it started to rain heavily, and the wind started to blow. We are not...
Don’t Rely on Luck When it Comes to Keeping Your Facility Running
The month of March brings two concepts to mind for a lot of people. Madness – as in “March Madness,” beloved by basketball fans everywhere. Luck – as in “Luck of the Irish,” hoped for by St. Patrick’s Day revelers everywhere. We’d like to combine those two concepts...
Resolve to Reduce Downtown
Happy New Year! It’s the time of year during which we all promise to do better and to be better. On the whole, however, we’re not very good at keeping our resolutions. That’s why so many of us make the same promises to ourselves year in and year out. But when it...
PdM for the Red Nose?
Think about a foggy Christmas Eve. Consider Rudolph’s shiny nose. Perfect match, right? Rudolph leads the team of reindeer through the fog, his nose providing a beacon in the darkness. Christmas is saved! Unless… What if Rudolph’s nose is on the blink? Won’t light up?...