Dr. Karl Hoffower with Failure Prevention Associates
Industrial Talk is onsite at the 30th Annual SMRP conference and speaking with to Dr. Karl Hoffower, Executive Director at Failure Prevention Associates about “Innovative vibration solutions to ensure your assets operate at peak performance”. Get the answers to your “vibration” questions along with Karl's unique insight on the “How” on this Industrial Talk interview!
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PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
vibration, asset, people, Karl, foundation, fan, industrial, foot, problem, machine, visual, find, broken, professional, maintenance, moving, great, alignment, shaft, conversation
Industrial Talk is brought to you by Armis. Yes, you were in the digital transformation game. Yes, you need to find trusted companies, trusted individuals to help you along with that journey. The Armis platform delivers complete asset intelligence, you know what that means? insights into your connected assets, you're in the digital transformation game, you have to have that insights into what is connected. Go to Armis.com. Find out more, you will not be disappointed. Industrial Talk is brought to you by Arduino the original all in one IoT platform. That's right, go out to arduino.cc and you will find documentation you will find devices powerful boards to help you with your digital transformation journey. It's all there. Go out to arduino.cc Find out more see how you can connect with these professionals to help you along with your digital transformation journey arduino.cc.
Welcome to the industrial talk podcast with Scott Mackenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting edge industry focused innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hard hat, grab your work boots, and let's get Alright,
welcome to industrial talk the number one industrial related podcast in the universe, Karl, and it's backed up by data so don't even begin to debate the fact that that is a fact it's data. And we are broadcasting live from SMRP. This is the 30th annual and I gotta tell you last year it was this one's better attended. You get a car. Yeah,
I totally agree. Well, there
you go, man. He's my wingman. His name is Karl. Whatever, I'll go with that. All right. Once again, we're brought to you by Hexagon Hexagon EAM that is a product that you need to look more into if you're in an asset management if you're looking to have a system that can definitely capture all of those assets. That's Hexagon EAM find out more go out to their website. All right, Karl, wing man. Yes, sir. It's always a pleasure to be able to have a conversation with Q.
Always a pleasure to be with Scott Mackenzie.
And the number one industrial related podcasts in the universe. Yes, right. Dr. Karl, Dr. Karl, Colin, Dr. Karl, are you having a good conference?
I am. I am. It was actually last night was the first night for the expo. Yeah. And the quantity of people that came by the booth was was pretty amazing. So we were talking to other people. And I don't know what we do a little bit different. You know, I've got an opinion on it that we had, well, what
what, whoa, what's the opinion, don't just leave it there outside of the fact that it's, it's my stellar personality? Well,
it's a thing of just trying to find out what people would find interesting, and what's really going to help solve solutions for them. So we came out with a new product. It's, we call it visual vibration. And basically, you can use your cell phone to shoot a slomo video will convert it with our software. And basically, you'll be able to visualize the vibration that's happening to the asset or machine or the piping of the foundation very rapidly. And so you can deploy this, everybody carries himself on these days. And almost everybody has a slow mo video capability. So it's universal in our neck of the woods with maintenance reliability, and say, hey, something's vibrating. It sounds a little weird. I'll shoot a little video on it. Let's get it rolling.
But so let's say we look at that visual, but your vibration guy, yes, yeah, you'll go out there you'll with you get your tools and you'd get your tool belt and you go out there and you just determine what that the whatever the status of the vibration status. Are you saying that the visual capabilities that you're talking about also just enhances your ability to go out there and say, Yeah, we need to go out there, we need to do a little bit more investigation.
So we've been noticing as plants have been aging that more and more concrete foundations are failing. And the vibration happens at the frequency of whatever the machine is turning at. So in the vibration world when whatever Miss speed the machine turns out, we call it the first frequency we're interested in, or the one time because there's things that are multiples of that. Like if you miss a line two shafts, you'll get two times the turning speed or to time. So you'll see a high one time well then you go okay, what is that? Is that misalignment is unbalanced. Is that a resonance? Is it a crack foundation looseness, things like that? And that's where that subtlety of that diagnosis is more difficult. So
yeah, does that makes sense? You're just saying that being able to visually say like, yeah, I see it, I see it. Yeah, that is I don't I don't have the the in depth analytics at that particular time. I need to I need to call Dr. Karl and come up with some sort of a tactical solution to what's taking place here, if any
certainly, yeah, that's like one of the things we had, this is a large to 40 foot long draft fan for a steel mill. And our diagnosis was soft foot of the motor, and the maintenance professionals, there's you're disagreeing with us. So we shot a video, and you can clearly see how the thing is having a soft issue. And then I said, Let's verify it because as a doctor, right, you don't want to do a single test and make a determination of a treatment or a course in therapy without having multiple things confirming your diagnosis. So we said, okay, the vibration is showing this, I did phase analysis, which is a way of looking at how the machines are rocking. And that helped confirm it. Then we shot the video, and it was clearly software. I said one more test, let's put a dial indicator on every foot and you loosen the ball. Let's see how much the machine moves. And so we did the first drive and feet the left on the right. And they moved three Mills, we did the non driving feet, one of the move three mills and the fourth foot moves nine mills. And that's the definitive test for a soft foot condition.
For the software conditions, soft foot soft foot condition. I see I see what you say chair. Now when I gotta dive even a little bit Don't. Don't text me listeners. But when you say nine mils, you're how do you measure it? How do you measure that? I mean, is that
a dial indicator? Yeah, okay, we put a dial indicator on the foot. And then we loosen the pressure, we loosen the bolt, and we see how far does a frame move relative to the base. So whenever you bolt something down, and you tighten it down, right, you're taking that last little bit of space between the machine and the and the actual base, right, and you're compressing it down to get it to hold fast. So a soft foot condition can either be a deficit in the machine or a deficit in the foundation or a combination. And it is a crucial step in precision alignment of machines to make sure that the bases and the foundations are relatively flat, so that when you walk machine down and you tighten it down, you don't get any distortion on the frame. So when we said nine Mills, we're talking a 1,000th of an inch. Yeah,
that's that's, yeah, that's, that's the point. It's like, oh, I can't I can't see that.
Can't see that. No, that's the thing about maintenance, it's difficult for many people to understand is is they go, you know, this thing's good enough? Well, it depends on what's good enough for you do you want it to last six months or six years, the more precision maintenance, you apply precision maintenance techniques you apply to installing or equipment, the longer it's going to run. That's why we use laser shaft alignment. You know, Ludacris greatest company in the world for learning about laser shaft alignment. They've been promoting that for 30 and 40 years now, because they found that when you use lasers to precision ly align to different shafts, you can get them down to having a deficit of less than two mils.
So back to that statement that you breezed over real quick. If I am committed to precision. There is a statistical improvement. Yes. Of that life of that asset. Yes. So even even when it comes down to just Mills, correct.
Yeah. So that's why a good mill right has dial indicators, a good mill, right, awesome. A precision alignment system. And you can do alignment with dial indicators, reverse dialing has been a common practice for a long time. It takes a long time. It's why people switch to lasers, because they're just as precise if and they're faster than a dial in the air. But when it comes to checking for soft fluid, the gold standard is using your dial indicator to measure when I loosen this foot, how much is it raised? Right? When I when I run a bolt the sucker down and crank on it. Am I getting equal pressure on all four feet? Or in this case with the microphone three? Yeah, yeah, no, I
did. So
if you have a deficit of one, what'll happen is it will pull the frame of torque it. That'll take the alignment of the bearings off a little bit, that'll put pressure on the shaft and all of a sudden, I bet excessively can start spinning in a circle spinning in November,
but But let's say I mean, I can't I can't see middles Correct. I can't it's so so if I'm a maintenance professional, right. And and it just gets down to it, my my brother in new there as he serves his phone. I'm trying to be very deep here. And you have to ask me, because I'm
letting people know that I can't call him back for the next hour, because I'm devoting this time to use.
Thanks. Thank you. But But how does it how does how does that starting point occur? I mean, you don't want to be in a situation where that There's just like, whatever the sound is just ridiculous. And it's obvious that there's a problem. How do you get sort of ahead of that? Well, part
of it is the decorative. The thing I was talking about at the very beginning is the degradation of our plants, right? Most once a new time, there are new plants being built all the time. However, there is a huge group of plants that are aging that are there. Some places you go to like, Ah, this player has been refining oil since 1922. Right? Yeah. And you can still see some of the stuff. I mean, I've walked into some switchgear, they went to Thomas Edison
installed that light hole.
Yeah, so there is an increase in the number of units that have excessive vibration, and they go, but we aligned it. It's, it doesn't have soffit, what's going on, and we find the foundational issues or problems or hype stresses problems. And that's where this visual vibration is nice, because you can visualize a wider area of assets. So and I'll send you a video clip, you can put this on if this goes on YouTube or something, but we have it where there's a process unit and agitator, that shaking, they're breaking small little devices all the time. And the root cause is the actual, concrete foundation that this whole thing sits on is broken, and it's wobbling around.
So when you when you go into I hate to go into this level level of detail, but it's geeky. When when you go into that two particular situation, and you're saying, Okay, I would imagine it's just me, I'm saying I'm having a problem with this, whatever this mode or this, whatever it is, right? I don't know where it is. I don't know what the problem is, I know that there's a problem, right? You, can you, you have to You're a doctor. So you're going to have to determine where the problem occurs, you're going to have to do some analytics is saying, now it's not there. It's sort of I think it's here. Let's do a little analyst. Yeah, it is. And I would imagine that visual solution allows you to sort of at least direct your eye to maybe the area,
it does. And that's what makes visual vibrations. Such a unique new offering is that anyone can shoot a cell phone camera video, and be able to visualize very rapidly, what how things are moving and how they're related to each other and their movement, whether it's the piping that's moving, whether it's the foundation, or it's the actual unit. So you can rapidly figure out and communicate that up the line to senior management, saying, Hey, we keep breaking this thing over and over and over again, we try fixing it in different ways. And we've missed the boat because it actually was the foundation. So it helps rapidly communicate to senior management. This is what you need to do.
But it also does a great job. It's just you know, I'm a visual guy, man. Don't Don't give me squiggly lines. God, I don't want squiggly lines I want I want something that and I can see it. And it and it makes complete sense. It's like, Yep, yeah, yeah, I see it. Yeah. And that that makes that makes complete sense. Oh, there you go. There's a video and I'll give you by the way, this is a podcast, you know, this doctor read it. Now this just sort of put it up. And it's also a video. But I'll give you the clip. And yeah, I need this clip.
So can you see how that thing's diving right there. That's
okay, now now we've got dead air now we gotta live comfortable. Because because he can't just leave well enough alone. He's got to just sit there. And so we went down the rabbit. I know, we certainly go down the rabbit hole help you so stand. So really, the reality of this is the fact that we want to have we want to extend you know, through precision, we want to extend the life of that asset. There we go.
Since jumping into nano Oh, there
you go moto.
Oh, check it out. Yeah, see how much that's bending and
And if you guys were looking at this, like I'm looking at it, there is obvious, obvious things that are taking place. Does that work? I mean, it shouldn't change the camera. There it is. There it is. Is it moving? Yeah, it is it there it
It is moving? All right. Maybe they got on there. Maybe it didn't. Sorry. AUDIENCE
That's okay. But no, you what you're what you're striving for what you're really focused on is an extension of that asset uptime. I don't And and, and you're truly in essence, trying to remove that catastrophic situation that can occur with an asset correct, you know, so we
had that we've had several fans this year that had issues and people would call us and say can you balance this fan? Sure, we can bounce the fan. We assessed the fan and we said it's not out of balance. Because surely it has to be a bounce and think about vibration that can get people in trouble is an elevated level of vibration at turning speed again, a high one time, right because it doesn't matter the payment of the machine, each machine, if it's an unbalanced software misalignment looseness resonance can all vibrate excessively at that same frequency, whatever the machine turns out. So there's a whole slew of problems that come with a high one time. So suppose you're looking at as a vibration spectrum, a squiggly line, and then a graph of lines. And they go, let's go to high one time notes on a fan of balancing, well, 80% of the time, you'll probably okay. But when we go in, because we're the vibration professionals. And we assess it, we said, unfortunately, this is not an unbalanced situation. This has to do with XY and Z. In this case, the three fans I'm talking about this year was all broken foundations. And it was difficult for people to want to understand that. And that's where visual vibration was so great, and giving the ability for people who are a non technical group, because you're talking with the finance people about, hey, we need you to commit to spending hundreds of $1,000 to break down the old Foundation, get it all the way down to dirt, put a new rebar, put a new concrete and build the thing back up. That's a difficult sell, because you're gonna get that unit offline for
weeks. It is do you do find yourself sometimes just, you know, I know we have a problem. Do you just get some? Some conversations that are around? How can we extend the life of this asset all the time? Can we not take it off right now? Because we whatever the the pushes?
So that's a great question. Because we get that constantly, right? It's well, is there another alternative, see anything we can do there. And in certain aspects, this fan in particular, and we got called it after the fan blew up the first time, had a debris field about 50 feet off the one side when the thing exploded, we're talking six to 14 foot diameter draughon. So pretty good debris field. Luckily, no one was injured. So we came in, did our assessment and said the foundation's broken. So they fix at least it but in fact, Benny Ortega, who's our Senior Solutions Provider, he did a cause map, he's fantastic at doing a lot of things, but one of the things he excels at is doing these cause maps. So in doing the cause map, the foundation we found to be broken, we felt was a secondary occurrence after the first time the fan failed. Well, they put all their money, time and energy in fixing the foundation, which they needed to. However, they didn't continue to look at some other things you found, like the temperatures between this fan and its sister fan was 400 degrees difference? Well, if you don't think about metal, when you add heat, things thermally expand. So we were asking, What have you figured out why you have this 400 degree, extra amount of heat inside this process? Because it's going to thermally grow more, and it may grow out of tolerance and touch off. So we'd put that in our cosmetic Well, unfortunately, that wasn't addressed until the next time the fan and it blew up. And people were mad at us. Because they fixed the foundation. We said no, let's go to the cause, man. So and I felt bad for the guys, because they you know, they've lost several fans, our production is way down. And, unfortunately, is that you get people that want to have just a definitive solution. And nothing else. And unfortunately, plants are similar humans where you're gonna have someone who has diabetes, arthritis, heart problems. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And and they're saying, I want to run a marathon, you go, okay, great. Well, we're gonna start with handling your diabetes and your heartbeat, right? But we haven't addressed the knee arthritis. And so then they get mad, they weren't able to run the marathon, we said, well, first we had to get you to, you know, these things, take care of them go to the next one. And they get angry about it. And I'm sorry, your system is so complicated, as wasn't a quick fix. But we've been lulled into this sense, and it should always be a quick fix, because I can order you know, I can order Uber to bring us food right now. And I can have Starbucks to have drinks ready to go. Right? So we have all this convenience in the in the personal life. But when you get into other things, there's some complications and so makes it a nuanced conversation.
But but it does speak well or bode well that you have to be clear. You have to be precise in your diagnosis. And and and have everybody sort of just like a doctor just like talking to a patient just like anything else. That that has to be that conversation in you right I think that culturally we are we're just we want satisfaction now. And I blame I blame Amazon Yes, I blame you Amazon because because I can go and get whatever I want. Well, we
can blame whoever you want to learn things but so this is why I like visual vibration because anyone with a cell phone camera can shoot a video and we can process it for him get that back to him rapidly and it can communicate at multiple levels into the finance link clearly see Oh, you're right. Yeah, it's broken. Darn it. Okay, what do we do? It's okay, we need to do this. This and so one of the things our takeaway on that cause map was, they were in such a rush to move forward on things we said, Okay. And then we, we had a document where he said, Okay, we want to follow up with you and help do commissioning and startup on this thing. I said, I got it. Okay, if you've got it, and you need to take care of everything. So review the cause mouth. So we had good communication there. Unfortunately, that person was busy and didn't. And they grenaded another thing. So. So this time we got brought in, we've been helping them throughout the whole process, and the fans have been running great now. But it was a process issue that was located to be the reason why it's there now. So
I has, it's changing all the time, right?
There's constant change. And that's one of the things you need to embrace is that there's constant change, but you still have to have a roadmap of where you want to be where you want to go.
How did you get holy, go to failure?
prevention.com. You can look up Dr. Karl, Hoffower on LinkedIn. That failure prevention.com is the best way to find this
very young man. Thank you. Again, it's always a pleasure, even though you had been surfing your dog on cell phone the whole time. Let's be clear,
let's be clear. No, I don't want to be clear wanting to message to let them know I was I want to be as currently occupied by the Great Scott Mackenzie. And industrial talk podcast,
I tried the number one industrial related podcast in the universe backed up by data
data. I listened to you all the time. And that was that's No, I'm not trying to blow sunshine a backside.
I kind of liked that. All right, we're broadcasting from the 30th annual SMRP conference here in Raleigh, North Carolina. You get great people like Karl and others that are definitely delivering the goods. We're going to wrap it up on the other side, you're going to have all the contact information for Karl and his company shortly. So stay tuned.
You're listening to the industrial talk Podcast Network.
Alright, once again, thank you, thank you very much for your support. Industrial talk really, truly appreciates you. That's why this platform is here to celebrate you right there pointing right at you on the video. Dr. Karl Hoffower. He was in the house delivering goods. He never disappoint a lot of fun. I always, and I mean, always enjoy our conversation. And I'm telling you right now, from his heart, he is passionate. He's passionate about you and your assets and helping you succeed. Dr. Karl, I'll have all the contact information out on industrial talk. So if you're not, you will be able to get a hold of it. Now if you're an asset management professional, yes. Or a maintenance professional, yes. Or reliability professional? Yes. You need to be a part of SMRP. Yes. MRP is a wonderful organization. And it has incredible members all focused on just really doing a good job in the world of reliability right there. There's no other way of putting it. There's this level of passion, and you need to be a part of it. So go out to SMRP.org get SMRP.org might not more get engaged. Great. I mean, I think I think they have their next conference. And I want to say it's in Orlando. Don't hold me to it. But we'll definitely dial that in but you're just not you need to be a part of it. So anyway, thank you again, hanging out with people like Karl, you're gonna change the world. Be bold, be brave. I always say it because you deserve it. This platform is here for you tell your story. Tell everybody about it. We're going to have another great conversation coming from SMRP shortly so stay tuned.
Transcript
Industrial Talk is brought to you by Armis. Yes, you were in the digital transformation game. Yes, you need to find trusted companies, trusted individuals to help you along with that journey. The Armis platform delivers complete asset intelligence, you know what that means? insights into your connected assets, you're in the digital transformation game, you have to have that insights into what is connected. Go to Armis.com. Find out more, you will not be disappointed. Industrial Talk is brought to you by Arduino the original all in one IoT platform. That's right, go out to arduino.cc and you will find documentation you will find devices powerful boards to help you with your digital transformation journey. It's all there. Go out to arduino.cc Find out more see how you can connect with these professionals to help you along with your digital transformation journey arduino.cc.
Welcome to the industrial talk podcast with Scott Mackenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting edge industry focused innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hard hat, grab your work boots, and let's get Alright,
welcome to industrial talk the number one industrial related podcast in the universe, Karl, and it's backed up by data so don't even begin to debate the fact that that is a fact it's data. And we are broadcasting live from SMRP. This is the 30th annual and I gotta tell you last year it was this one's better attended. You get a car. Yeah,
I totally agree. Well, there
you go, man. He's my wingman. His name is Karl. Whatever, I'll go with that. All right. Once again, we're brought to you by Hexagon Hexagon EAM that is a product that you need to look more into if you're in an asset management if you're looking to have a system that can definitely capture all of those assets. That's Hexagon EAM find out more go out to their website. All right, Karl, wing man. Yes, sir. It's always a pleasure to be able to have a conversation with Q.
Always a pleasure to be with Scott Mackenzie.
And the number one industrial related podcasts in the universe. Yes, right. Dr. Karl, Dr. Karl, Colin, Dr. Karl, are you having a good conference?
I am. I am. It was actually last night was the first night for the expo. Yeah. And the quantity of people that came by the booth was was pretty amazing. So we were talking to other people. And I don't know what we do a little bit different. You know, I've got an opinion on it that we had, well, what
what, whoa, what's the opinion, don't just leave it there outside of the fact that it's, it's my stellar personality? Well,
it's a thing of just trying to find out what people would find interesting, and what's really going to help solve solutions for them. So we came out with a new product. It's, we call it visual vibration. And basically, you can use your cell phone to shoot a slomo video will convert it with our software. And basically, you'll be able to visualize the vibration that's happening to the asset or machine or the piping of the foundation very rapidly. And so you can deploy this, everybody carries himself on these days. And almost everybody has a slow mo video capability. So it's universal in our neck of the woods with maintenance reliability, and say, hey, something's vibrating. It sounds a little weird. I'll shoot a little video on it. Let's get it rolling.
But so let's say we look at that visual, but your vibration guy, yes, yeah, you'll go out there you'll with you get your tools and you'd get your tool belt and you go out there and you just determine what that the whatever the status of the vibration status. Are you saying that the visual capabilities that you're talking about also just enhances your ability to go out there and say, Yeah, we need to go out there, we need to do a little bit more investigation.
So we've been noticing as plants have been aging that more and more concrete foundations are failing. And the vibration happens at the frequency of whatever the machine is turning at. So in the vibration world when whatever Miss speed the machine turns out, we call it the first frequency we're interested in, or the one time because there's things that are multiples of that. Like if you miss a line two shafts, you'll get two times the turning speed or to time. So you'll see a high one time well then you go okay, what is that? Is that misalignment is unbalanced. Is that a resonance? Is it a crack foundation looseness, things like that? And that's where that subtlety of that diagnosis is more difficult. So
yeah, does that makes sense? You're just saying that being able to visually say like, yeah, I see it, I see it. Yeah, that is I don't I don't have the the in depth analytics at that particular time. I need to I need to call Dr. Karl and come up with some sort of a tactical solution to what's taking place here, if any
certainly, yeah, that's like one of the things we had, this is a large to 40 foot long draft fan for a steel mill. And our diagnosis was soft foot of the motor, and the maintenance professionals, there's you're disagreeing with us. So we shot a video, and you can clearly see how the thing is having a soft issue. And then I said, Let's verify it because as a doctor, right, you don't want to do a single test and make a determination of a treatment or a course in therapy without having multiple things confirming your diagnosis. So we said, okay, the vibration is showing this, I did phase analysis, which is a way of looking at how the machines are rocking. And that helped confirm it. Then we shot the video, and it was clearly software. I said one more test, let's put a dial indicator on every foot and you loosen the ball. Let's see how much the machine moves. And so we did the first drive and feet the left on the right. And they moved three Mills, we did the non driving feet, one of the move three mills and the fourth foot moves nine mills. And that's the definitive test for a soft foot condition.
For the software conditions, soft foot soft foot condition. I see I see what you say chair. Now when I gotta dive even a little bit Don't. Don't text me listeners. But when you say nine mils, you're how do you measure it? How do you measure that? I mean, is that
a dial indicator? Yeah, okay, we put a dial indicator on the foot. And then we loosen the pressure, we loosen the bolt, and we see how far does a frame move relative to the base. So whenever you bolt something down, and you tighten it down, right, you're taking that last little bit of space between the machine and the and the actual base, right, and you're compressing it down to get it to hold fast. So a soft foot condition can either be a deficit in the machine or a deficit in the foundation or a combination. And it is a crucial step in precision alignment of machines to make sure that the bases and the foundations are relatively flat, so that when you walk machine down and you tighten it down, you don't get any distortion on the frame. So when we said nine Mills, we're talking a 1,000th of an inch. Yeah,
that's that's, yeah, that's, that's the point. It's like, oh, I can't I can't see that.
Can't see that. No, that's the thing about maintenance, it's difficult for many people to understand is is they go, you know, this thing's good enough? Well, it depends on what's good enough for you do you want it to last six months or six years, the more precision maintenance, you apply precision maintenance techniques you apply to installing or equipment, the longer it's going to run. That's why we use laser shaft alignment. You know, Ludacris greatest company in the world for learning about laser shaft alignment. They've been promoting that for 30 and 40 years now, because they found that when you use lasers to precision ly align to different shafts, you can get them down to having a deficit of less than two mils.
So back to that statement that you breezed over real quick. If I am committed to precision. There is a statistical improvement. Yes. Of that life of that asset. Yes. So even even when it comes down to just Mills, correct.
Yeah. So that's why a good mill right has dial indicators, a good mill, right, awesome. A precision alignment system. And you can do alignment with dial indicators, reverse dialing has been a common practice for a long time. It takes a long time. It's why people switch to lasers, because they're just as precise if and they're faster than a dial in the air. But when it comes to checking for soft fluid, the gold standard is using your dial indicator to measure when I loosen this foot, how much is it raised? Right? When I when I run a bolt the sucker down and crank on it. Am I getting equal pressure on all four feet? Or in this case with the microphone three? Yeah, yeah, no, I
did. So
if you have a deficit of one, what'll happen is it will pull the frame of torque it. That'll take the alignment of the bearings off a little bit, that'll put pressure on the shaft and all of a sudden, I bet excessively can start spinning in a circle spinning in November,
but But let's say I mean, I can't I can't see middles Correct. I can't it's so so if I'm a maintenance professional, right. And and it just gets down to it, my my brother in new there as he serves his phone. I'm trying to be very deep here. And you have to ask me, because I'm
letting people know that I can't call him back for the next hour, because I'm devoting this time to use.
Thanks. Thank you. But But how does it how does how does that starting point occur? I mean, you don't want to be in a situation where that There's just like, whatever the sound is just ridiculous. And it's obvious that there's a problem. How do you get sort of ahead of that? Well, part
of it is the decorative. The thing I was talking about at the very beginning is the degradation of our plants, right? Most once a new time, there are new plants being built all the time. However, there is a huge group of plants that are aging that are there. Some places you go to like, Ah, this player has been refining oil since 1922. Right? Yeah. And you can still see some of the stuff. I mean, I've walked into some switchgear, they went to Thomas Edison
installed that light hole.
Yeah, so there is an increase in the number of units that have excessive vibration, and they go, but we aligned it. It's, it doesn't have soffit, what's going on, and we find the foundational issues or problems or hype stresses problems. And that's where this visual vibration is nice, because you can visualize a wider area of assets. So and I'll send you a video clip, you can put this on if this goes on YouTube or something, but we have it where there's a process unit and agitator, that shaking, they're breaking small little devices all the time. And the root cause is the actual, concrete foundation that this whole thing sits on is broken, and it's wobbling around.
So when you when you go into I hate to go into this level level of detail, but it's geeky. When when you go into that two particular situation, and you're saying, Okay, I would imagine it's just me, I'm saying I'm having a problem with this, whatever this mode or this, whatever it is, right? I don't know where it is. I don't know what the problem is, I know that there's a problem, right? You, can you, you have to You're a doctor. So you're going to have to determine where the problem occurs, you're going to have to do some analytics is saying, now it's not there. It's sort of I think it's here. Let's do a little analyst. Yeah, it is. And I would imagine that visual solution allows you to sort of at least direct your eye to maybe the area,
it does. And that's what makes visual vibrations. Such a unique new offering is that anyone can shoot a cell phone camera video, and be able to visualize very rapidly, what how things are moving and how they're related to each other and their movement, whether it's the piping that's moving, whether it's the foundation, or it's the actual unit. So you can rapidly figure out and communicate that up the line to senior management, saying, Hey, we keep breaking this thing over and over and over again, we try fixing it in different ways. And we've missed the boat because it actually was the foundation. So it helps rapidly communicate to senior management. This is what you need to do.
But it also does a great job. It's just you know, I'm a visual guy, man. Don't Don't give me squiggly lines. God, I don't want squiggly lines I want I want something that and I can see it. And it and it makes complete sense. It's like, Yep, yeah, yeah, I see it. Yeah. And that that makes that makes complete sense. Oh, there you go. There's a video and I'll give you by the way, this is a podcast, you know, this doctor read it. Now this just sort of put it up. And it's also a video. But I'll give you the clip. And yeah, I need this clip.
So can you see how that thing's diving right there. That's
okay, now now we've got dead air now we gotta live comfortable. Because because he can't just leave well enough alone. He's got to just sit there. And so we went down the rabbit. I know, we certainly go down the rabbit hole help you so stand. So really, the reality of this is the fact that we want to have we want to extend you know, through precision, we want to extend the life of that asset. There we go.
Since jumping into nano Oh, there
you go moto.
Oh, check it out. Yeah, see how much that's bending and
And if you guys were looking at this, like I'm looking at it, there is obvious, obvious things that are taking place. Does that work? I mean, it shouldn't change the camera. There it is. There it is. Is it moving? Yeah, it is it there it
It is moving? All right. Maybe they got on there. Maybe it didn't. Sorry. AUDIENCE
That's okay. But no, you what you're what you're striving for what you're really focused on is an extension of that asset uptime. I don't And and, and you're truly in essence, trying to remove that catastrophic situation that can occur with an asset correct, you know, so we
had that we've had several fans this year that had issues and people would call us and say can you balance this fan? Sure, we can bounce the fan. We assessed the fan and we said it's not out of balance. Because surely it has to be a bounce and think about vibration that can get people in trouble is an elevated level of vibration at turning speed again, a high one time, right because it doesn't matter the payment of the machine, each machine, if it's an unbalanced software misalignment looseness resonance can all vibrate excessively at that same frequency, whatever the machine turns out. So there's a whole slew of problems that come with a high one time. So suppose you're looking at as a vibration spectrum, a squiggly line, and then a graph of lines. And they go, let's go to high one time notes on a fan of balancing, well, 80% of the time, you'll probably okay. But when we go in, because we're the vibration professionals. And we assess it, we said, unfortunately, this is not an unbalanced situation. This has to do with XY and Z. In this case, the three fans I'm talking about this year was all broken foundations. And it was difficult for people to want to understand that. And that's where visual vibration was so great, and giving the ability for people who are a non technical group, because you're talking with the finance people about, hey, we need you to commit to spending hundreds of $1,000 to break down the old Foundation, get it all the way down to dirt, put a new rebar, put a new concrete and build the thing back up. That's a difficult sell, because you're gonna get that unit offline for
weeks. It is do you do find yourself sometimes just, you know, I know we have a problem. Do you just get some? Some conversations that are around? How can we extend the life of this asset all the time? Can we not take it off right now? Because we whatever the the pushes?
So that's a great question. Because we get that constantly, right? It's well, is there another alternative, see anything we can do there. And in certain aspects, this fan in particular, and we got called it after the fan blew up the first time, had a debris field about 50 feet off the one side when the thing exploded, we're talking six to 14 foot diameter draughon. So pretty good debris field. Luckily, no one was injured. So we came in, did our assessment and said the foundation's broken. So they fix at least it but in fact, Benny Ortega, who's our Senior Solutions Provider, he did a cause map, he's fantastic at doing a lot of things, but one of the things he excels at is doing these cause maps. So in doing the cause map, the foundation we found to be broken, we felt was a secondary occurrence after the first time the fan failed. Well, they put all their money, time and energy in fixing the foundation, which they needed to. However, they didn't continue to look at some other things you found, like the temperatures between this fan and its sister fan was 400 degrees difference? Well, if you don't think about metal, when you add heat, things thermally expand. So we were asking, What have you figured out why you have this 400 degree, extra amount of heat inside this process? Because it's going to thermally grow more, and it may grow out of tolerance and touch off. So we'd put that in our cosmetic Well, unfortunately, that wasn't addressed until the next time the fan and it blew up. And people were mad at us. Because they fixed the foundation. We said no, let's go to the cause, man. So and I felt bad for the guys, because they you know, they've lost several fans, our production is way down. And, unfortunately, is that you get people that want to have just a definitive solution. And nothing else. And unfortunately, plants are similar humans where you're gonna have someone who has diabetes, arthritis, heart problems. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And and they're saying, I want to run a marathon, you go, okay, great. Well, we're gonna start with handling your diabetes and your heartbeat, right? But we haven't addressed the knee arthritis. And so then they get mad, they weren't able to run the marathon, we said, well, first we had to get you to, you know, these things, take care of them go to the next one. And they get angry about it. And I'm sorry, your system is so complicated, as wasn't a quick fix. But we've been lulled into this sense, and it should always be a quick fix, because I can order you know, I can order Uber to bring us food right now. And I can have Starbucks to have drinks ready to go. Right? So we have all this convenience in the in the personal life. But when you get into other things, there's some complications and so makes it a nuanced conversation.
But but it does speak well or bode well that you have to be clear. You have to be precise in your diagnosis. And and and have everybody sort of just like a doctor just like talking to a patient just like anything else. That that has to be that conversation in you right I think that culturally we are we're just we want satisfaction now. And I blame I blame Amazon Yes, I blame you Amazon because because I can go and get whatever I want. Well, we
can blame whoever you want to learn things but so this is why I like visual vibration because anyone with a cell phone camera can shoot a video and we can process it for him get that back to him rapidly and it can communicate at multiple levels into the finance link clearly see Oh, you're right. Yeah, it's broken. Darn it. Okay, what do we do? It's okay, we need to do this. This and so one of the things our takeaway on that cause map was, they were in such a rush to move forward on things we said, Okay. And then we, we had a document where he said, Okay, we want to follow up with you and help do commissioning and startup on this thing. I said, I got it. Okay, if you've got it, and you need to take care of everything. So review the cause mouth. So we had good communication there. Unfortunately, that person was busy and didn't. And they grenaded another thing. So. So this time we got brought in, we've been helping them throughout the whole process, and the fans have been running great now. But it was a process issue that was located to be the reason why it's there now. So
I has, it's changing all the time, right?
There's constant change. And that's one of the things you need to embrace is that there's constant change, but you still have to have a roadmap of where you want to be where you want to go.
How did you get holy, go to failure?
prevention.com. You can look up Dr. Karl, Hoffower on LinkedIn. That failure prevention.com is the best way to find this
very young man. Thank you. Again, it's always a pleasure, even though you had been surfing your dog on cell phone the whole time. Let's be clear,
let's be clear. No, I don't want to be clear wanting to message to let them know I was I want to be as currently occupied by the Great Scott Mackenzie. And industrial talk podcast,
I tried the number one industrial related podcast in the universe backed up by data
data. I listened to you all the time. And that was that's No, I'm not trying to blow sunshine a backside.
I kind of liked that. All right, we're broadcasting from the 30th annual SMRP conference here in Raleigh, North Carolina. You get great people like Karl and others that are definitely delivering the goods. We're going to wrap it up on the other side, you're going to have all the contact information for Karl and his company shortly. So stay tuned.
You're listening to the industrial talk Podcast Network.
Alright, once again, thank you, thank you very much for your support. Industrial talk really, truly appreciates you. That's why this platform is here to celebrate you right there pointing right at you on the video. Dr. Karl Hoffower. He was in the house delivering goods. He never disappoint a lot of fun. I always, and I mean, always enjoy our conversation. And I'm telling you right now, from his heart, he is passionate. He's passionate about you and your assets and helping you succeed. Dr. Karl, I'll have all the contact information out on industrial talk. So if you're not, you will be able to get a hold of it. Now if you're an asset management professional, yes. Or a maintenance professional, yes. Or reliability professional? Yes. You need to be a part of SMRP. Yes. MRP is a wonderful organization. And it has incredible members all focused on just really doing a good job in the world of reliability right there. There's no other way of putting it. There's this level of passion, and you need to be a part of it. So go out to SMRP.org get SMRP.org might not more get engaged. Great. I mean, I think I think they have their next conference. And I want to say it's in Orlando. Don't hold me to it. But we'll definitely dial that in but you're just not you need to be a part of it. So anyway, thank you again, hanging out with people like Karl, you're gonna change the world. Be bold, be brave. I always say it because you deserve it. This platform is here for you tell your story. Tell everybody about it. We're going to have another great conversation coming from SMRP shortly so stay tuned.
About the author, Scott
I am Scott MacKenzie, husband, father, and passionate industry educator. From humble beginnings as a lathing contractor and certified journeyman/lineman to an Undergraduate and Master’s Degree in Business Administration, I have applied every aspect of my education and training to lead and influence. I believe in serving and adding value wherever I am called.
