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Understanding capabilities of modern thermal imaging can streamline maintenance operations and help prevent catastrophic failures.
Thermal imaging, also known as thermography, has always been a powerful predictive maintenance (PdM) tool because it can detect incipient failures in nearly all types of mechanical and electrical equipment. Now, high-performance, infrared (IR) imaging systems are scanning plant equipment and improving PdM programs. Getting the new thermal imaging capabilities into the hands of people most familiar with a plant and its equipment has increased the technology's usefulness, meaning that thermography is no longer strictly the domain of outside specialists or consultants.
Wausau Paper Corp.'s Rhinelander Division in Rhinelander, WI, is a case in point. At that plant, Bill Gray, the division's maintenance reliability specialist, oversees an aggressive predictive maintenance program. The program uses a new-generation imager to do thermography at least once every two weeks. Gray assesses the health of mechanical and electrical equipment.
Root cause
A large percentage of plant equipment failures involve a rise in operating temperature that reveals itself long before catastrophic failure occurs. In the past, the cost of imaging devices and the complexity of extracting useful predictive information from the raw data caused facilities managers to hire third-party thermography specialists to survey plants about once a year. In such operations, production equipment easily could fail between surveys.
Technology that makes the new thermal imaging devices useful is as complex as ever. (See "How a thermal imager works" sidebar.) However, these latest instruments are designed for use by in-house personnel and simplify the data collection process. They offer portability and ergonomic designs while sacrificing none of the performance qualities a PdM program requires. In fact, the new instruments, despite smaller size and ease of use, have significant on-board computer power to support the data-collection process. They also interface with software running on a desktop host computer, making it possible for maintenance managers to extract information needed.
At Wausau Paper, which still employs third-party thermography specialists, Bill Gray learns by double-checking their findings with his thermal imager. "On the mechanical side," he says, "we look at pumps, agitators, drives, and all rotating equipment. On the electrical side, we look at the switching gear, the motor control units, and the electric motors themselves."
On the job
Gray's...