Detecting Hotspots Early

I bought a noncontact optical IR thermometer for the cold finished steel bar mill i that I managed in 1993. We used it initially for 'finding/predicting' equipment bearing and motor bearing failures. With great success it was part of our predicive maintenance initiative that eliminated 90% of unplanned mill outages... after a 10 month period.

The mill was in Georgia, USA and when we did a review of our maintenance spend, we found that our electronics /controls spend was almost entirely Summer months.

So we did some baseline readings on our controls and circuit boards. We learned a lot.

Data was compelling, so we installed temperature controlled cabinets and board failures dropped dramatically. Payback was instantaneous when you factiored in lost production value while waiting for a custom circuit board from Germany...

We never even asked for approval for the funds, we just did it, figuring the uptime would more than cover it. It did. We never got 'dinged' for the overbudget...

Milo