Does anybody have any strong feelings about the quality of the user interface included on their condition based monitoring system?
For example is the right information for making quick decisions readily available through the computer screens or alarms included with your condition based maintenance system?
The software only gives you the information for making decisions in the most obvious situations. Human interface and knowledge is needed to understand what the data is telling you. This science isn't at the point where it can be 'dumbed' up so that anybody can do it.
Sometimes a simple alarm is more effective than a sophisticated system. Example - A vibration system required experienced engineers to set up alarm levels for a machine. He needs to know the bearing type, fault frequencies, running speed, etc. If a machine runs faster or slower than normal or has a different load, the sensors and alarms will be of little value. A simple bearing alarm like the "TIC" alarms when a machine your lubricant is getting too hot. We all know what happens when a lubricant gets too hot. If a machine is running fast, slow, is not at normal load, etc...too hot is still too hot. The "TIC" can be found at http://www.pmalert.com/. We paid less than $ 200 bucks and it works great. We have caught impending bearing faults before vibration monitoring. Also, when the lube gets hot, we usually flag that machine for further inspection. The oil could be over cooked. The viscousity may no longer separate the balls from the races in the bearings. An online system would have cost $5000.00 per machine or more. They estimates they give you are always low. Vibration transmitters dont detect bearing faults, or only detect bearing faults with the filtered type.
