Preventative Maintenance Overview

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“Preventative shaker maintenance yearly… your company will thank you dearly.”

A vibration shaker system is a considerable investment that requires preventative maintenance (PM) to ensure long-lasting and satisfactory performance.

The management and implementation of a PM program do not need to be a burden for a testing lab. With consistent PM practices, your equipment should last for decades.

Importance of Preventative Maintenance

Even a small action or inaction during testing can lead to problems in a laboratory. For instance, an improperly calibrated accelerometer can result in over-testing or under-testing.

Operating a shaker requiring maintenance can damage the shaker, slip table, fixture, or customer product, leading to costly repairs and extended downtime. If more than one piece of equipment is out of tolerance or near failure, the severity of issues may be even greater in magnitude.

Laboratories concerned with measurement uncertainty must adhere to a maintenance schedule. Test results outside of the stated uncertainties will necessitate an investigation, which requires employee time and a significant amount of paperwork. Test investigations can invalidate previous tests and require a lab to contact its customers. This situation reflects poorly on the engineer, the lab staff, and the company as a whole.

Proper maintenance, calibration, and verification of equipment help to avoid these problems. By investing a small amount of time upfront, the engineer can ensure the validity of their tests, prove that their equipment is in working order, and validate their results. These assurances are achieved through verification procedures before and after testing.

Staying on Top of Repairs

An effective PM will also immediately notify the engineer if there is a problem with a component of the testing system or if something has been damaged during a previous test. Damaged equipment can then be removed from use, repaired or recalibrated, and placed back into service expediently. In the end, PM avoids wasted time, reduces the possibility of invalid results, and helps secure a continued customer.

Certain repairs will always be necessary. A shaker is a mechanical system and parts will fatigue, components will need to be replaced, and armatures will need to be re-wound. However, a lab can stay ahead of these repairs with a comprehensive PM program, maintaining testing quality and avoiding a range of potential problems.

Preventative Maintenance Course

The Preventative Maintenance course walks students through the process of taking baseline measurements as part of their shaker maintenance program.