One of the UK’s largest brewers, had traditionally monitored its critical cask filling gear reducers using traditional methods such as vibration and oil sampling during the scheduled site visits. However, due to the inherent low operating speed of this critical worm gear reducer and its inaccessible location within the machine itself, it was very difficult to determine the exact condition of these drives.

Solution

An Oil Quality Sensor was installed and wired back into a local display unit, located on the machine body. The client could visually see the oil condition and temperature at all times. The display unit also allowed the client to set warning and alarm levels and was connected to a local alarm system.

Results

During a following maintenance window on a critical gearbox, the customer installed an additional sensor as they were concerned that the unit was deteriorating severely but could not accurately determine it’s condition. Within seconds of the sensor being installed it immediately gave out a warning alarm, indicating that the oil was severely damaged. As a matter of course an oil sample was forwarded to a laboratory for analysis. The results from the lab confirmed that the oil required urgent changing and the gearbox was showing signs of significant gear wear.