February 2025

August2024

Inside the February Issue

 

 

Proactive Maintenance:
The Key to Reducing Unscheduled Downtime

Image courtesy of Teledyne FLIR
When production halts unexpectedly, it disrupts the entire supply chain, leading to delays in product delivery and potential loss of customer trust. Financially, the costs can be substantial, including lost revenue, overtime pay for workers, and expenses for emergency repairs. Additionally, frequent downtime can damage equipment, reducing its potential lifespan and increasing maintenance costs.

Thermal imaging, also known as Thermography, is a powerful tool for preventative maintenance in manufacturing. It involves using infrared cameras to detect heat patterns, anomalies in equipment and to scan for dangerous gas leaks. By identifying areas of excessive heat, which often indicate potential failures and environmentally harmful gas leaks, thermography allows maintenance teams to address issues before they lead to costly unscheduled downtime.

One of the key benefits of thermography is its non-invasive nature. Thermal imaging is performed while equipment is operating, minimizing disruptions to production. This proactive approach helps in identifying problems such as electrical faults, mechanical wear, and insulation failures at an early stage. Consequently, it enhances the reliability and efficiency of machinery, extending its lifespan and reducing maintenance costs.

Moreover, thermography provides valuable data that can be used to track the condition of equipment over time. This data-driven approach enables more informed decision-making and better planning of maintenance activities. Overall, thermography is an essential component of a robust preventative maintenance strategy, ensuring operational continuity and safety. Teledyne FLIR is a company specializing in the design and production of thermal imaging cameras and sensors.

Renowned for their innovative technology, FLIR's products are used across various industries, including manufacturing, security, and environmental monitoring. FLIRs cameras are sophisticated instruments that can appear daunting to the untrained user, with specialist applications requiring a deep knowledge of thermography to provide valuable insights.

On the other hand, FLIRs thermal imaging cameras can simply be viewed as tools to do a job, and that job is to inform maintenance teams about the condition of critical assets. The information can provide information to predict the maintenance required, prevent failure, and avoid unscheduled downtime.

While training can be provided by organizations such as the Infrared Training Centre, or online via the FLIR Academy; FLIR offer multiple features to support both experienced and inexperienced thermographers to monitor their equipment.

For example, FLIR Exx-series, and Txxx-series of cameras can be set-up by an experienced user to follow an ´inspection route´, then less experienced or even beginners can follow the same route, with the camera guiding its operator to take accurate and usable images, pre-selecting the settings and parameters as required. Full story »

 

 

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