Condition monitoring for cooling pumps: a case study

Read how SAM4 caught a missing foundation bolt in a cooling pump for this food & beverage manufacturer.

A missing coupling bolt caused the pump to experience mild misalignment and unbalance.

SAM4 flagged a slow rise in intensity at the pump’s rotational frequency. We notified the customer and put the pump on orange alert, for close tracking by our data science team. We updated the customer weekly as the intensity gradually continued to rise. Three weeks after our first alert, values began to spike rapidly, and we moved the pump to red alert. The customer inspected the running pump three days later and reported that manual vibration measurements indicated mild misalignment and unbalance. Stroboscope inspection revealed that the coupling was missing one of its bolts. The customer scheduled the pump for repairs at its next planned stop.

“It was great to get this insight so early, before it caused any damage and all we had to do was put in a new bolt.”

The rise in intensity at the circled points corresponds to the pump’s rotational frequency.

The evolution of the rise in intensity at the pump’s rotational frequency over time. We alerted the customer at the orange and red lines; they performed maintenance at the green line.