Using Machine Tool Monitoring to Detect, Analyze, and Correct Spindle Issues Early
Machine tool monitoring has become an indispensable asset to machine shops operating in today’s competitive manufacturing landscape. Reactive maintenance strategies are no longer sufficient in an environment where customers will not tolerate unexpected machine tool failures that impact production schedules, delivery dates, and part quality. Implementing monitoring-based predictive maintenance practices allows manufacturers to solve problems […]
Understanding The Three Approaches to Spindle Maintenance: Reactive, Preventive, and Predictive
In machining, there’s no denying that some form of spindle maintenance should be in place to mitigate failures and downtime. While the ultimate goal of any maintenance strategy is to reach net-zero downtime, the method employed will dictate how close manufacturers can come to achieving that goal. Approaches to spindle maintenance fall into three categories: […]
Understanding the Four Stages of Spindle Bearing Failure
Bearing failure is a leading cause of spindle breakdowns. The truth is, it’s easy to take bearings for granted. Out of sight, out of mind. But bearing systems are at the heart of every spindle and can’t be forgotten. They’re highly engineered and manufactured to hyper-precise tolerances. As such, they require strict maintenance protocols and […]
How Investing in Predictive Maintenance Can Boost the Bottom Line
Equipment maintenance is one of the biggest cost centers for many manufacturers. Machine tool operators are certainly no exception to this rule. Maintenance programs of the past sought to increase the uptime and lifespan of spindles by ensuring they were well cared for on a routine basis, thus minimizing the chance that they would break […]
Critical Spindle Installation Steps: Balance Correction & Vibration Baselining
Last month, we discussed the importance of proper spindle installation. In particular, we reviewed important basic steps — pre-installation inspection, mounting, lubrication hookup, post-installation inspection, and start up/run in. But there are two steps that we left out last month. Not because they’re important, but because they’re the most important. Those steps are balance correction and […]
The Key Ingredient to Improving Reliability Success in Your Machine Shop
One topic we hear more and more about these days is reliability. Essentially, this refers to initiatives designed to keep manufacturing facilities up and running efficiently and, well, reliably. It consists of several components such as predictive maintenance, planning, scheduling, data collection and analysis, and much more. Today, we’ll review a critical component to the […]
Achieving Cost Savings with Improved Maintenance and Cooperation
The push and pull between production teams and maintenance teams is a familiar story on shop floors across all sectors. Maintenance wants to keep machines running well, maximizing efficiency and lifespan; production wants a steady stream of finished parts going out the door. We all know who gets their way most often. Production, who tend […]
Avoiding Spindle Failure by Understanding Vibration Analysis Thresholds
We know that small interruptions to productive work time are a hassle that nobody wants. That is why we often find that customers will ignore the alarm notifications when vibration testing is performed on their machinery. Frankly, we do understand the impulse. Why pull a machine out of service when everything seems, at face value, […]
The True Costs of Neglecting Spindle Maintenance
Unplanned downtime. It’s practically a boogeyman in industrial circles, and rightly so — every minute that your floor isn’t producing, it’s costing you money. The cost of unplanned downtime is bad enough, but it doesn’t stop there. If production grinds to a halt, the cost of your now unproductive staff adds up too. This doesn’t […]
Manufacturing Downtime in Automotive and Aerospace Industries
Timing is everything, and in manufacturing, this philosophical adage holds true. Where production schedules are directly affected by assembly stages, each piece of the production puzzle must work together. In a perfect world, the manufacturing process would be frictionless: machines would continuously operate at peak efficiency, and production deadlines would be met time and time […]