Maintenance Services for Rotating Equipment: Stop Unexpected Downtime Before It Starts
Your facility is only as strong as its weakest mechanical component. When a part malfunctions, no matter how small it may be, it can cost you thousands of dollars in lost production time. One part in need of repair or replacement can negatively affect other pieces of machinery, knocking pieces of equipment down one by one like a line of dominoes.
Whether it’s an overheated motor or worn bearings giving you trouble, your operation will be back up and running better than before with help from our reliability technicians and our comprehensive suite of rotating equipment services. Take a look at a few of the machines we service and see how we can help you.
Centrifugal Pumps
Whether transporting raw sewage and treated effluent within a wastewater treatment plant or maintaining a sterile environment during fluid transfer in a pharmaceutical plant, the smooth operation of centrifugal pumps within your facility is essential. Cavitation, excessive vibrations and overheating are a few issues that can hinder your centrifugal pumps’ performance.
Since the water pressure inside a centrifugal pump is so high, it’s imperative to monitor pressure and control flow rates to avoid cavitation. Regular maintenance can help with this. Keeping track of these factors ensures that the pump is operating at a temperature that minimizes vapor pressure.
If a centrifugal pump is vibrating abnormally, it may be a sign of misalignment between the pump and its motor. Misalignment can cause increased vibrations and lead to premature component failure. If you’re having trouble determining whether your equipment’s vibrations are abnormal, vibration monitoring and analysis services can help predict when equipment failures may occur before they happen.
Additionally, centrifugal pumps can quickly overheat when one component underperforms, shortening the unit’s lifespan. Infrared thermography services can detect localized heating in a motor or high bearing temperatures before they ultimately damage the pump, halt operations and result in costly downtime. If your machinery does get to that stage, Cornerstone’s team of experienced technicians will fully replace your motor or bearings to help you get back to business.
Centrifugal Compressors
While centrifugal pumps convey liquid, centrifugal compressors convey gas, compressing natural gas, transporting natural gas to gas storage facilities, cooling gas to create liquefied natural gas and more. Your facility simply can’t afford surge or choke from a faulty compressor. That’s where a predictive maintenance (PdM) program paired with regular preventive maintenance (PM) comes in: to keep your machinery in tip-top shape.
When one impeller in your centrifugal compressor becomes damaged, it could cause serious damage to other compressor components and halt operation altogether. Our reliability technicians can replace the impeller to restore your compressor. If your compressor is showing signs of excessive vibrations or making loud noises, it could indicate an imbalance, misalignment or worn bearings within the centrifugal compressor.
If you’re having trouble identifying the source of these problems, you can count on the Cornerstone Mechanical team to diagnose and fix these issues for you. Our experienced reliability technicians can conduct dynamic balancing services and laser alignment services or replace any bearings that are on their last legs.
Exhaust Fans
Exhaust fans not only improve indoor air quality for employees by dispelling pollutants, heat and humidity from a space, but they also extend the lifespan of machinery by eliminating dust buildup. When an exhaust fan malfunctions, it can’t create proper ventilation, exposing your team to unsafe working conditions and putting both your employees and your equipment in danger.
If your exhaust fan is making loud humming or grinding noises, vibrating intensely or isn’t creating proper ventilation, a misaligned shaft and motor or an imbalance may be the culprit. Cornerstone’s reliability technicians can quickly diagnose and fix the root of the problem so your exhaust fan can operate at peak efficiency.
From repairing an exhaust fan’s loudly grinding motor and balancing wheels and rollers to replacing an exhaust fan entirely and cooling tower maintenance and repair, the Cornerstone team can get your fan back up and running with minimal disruption to production.
Centrifugal Blowers
Centrifugal blowers move large volumes of air at high pressure in a variety of contexts, supplying combustion air to burners, creating airflow in dust collector systems and more. In each application, the centrifugal blower’s operating condition could mean the difference between a safe, well-ventilated facility and costly disaster.
If your centrifugal blower is improperly installed or maintained, it could result in an overheated motor, a loose or worn belt in a belt-driven motor, bearing failure or even a misaligned impeller. These and other issues can snowball and lead to premature equipment failure, so it’s imperative to detect warning signs before larger problems occur.
With help from Cornerstone’s experienced technicians and infrared thermography services, you can conduct thorough centrifugal blower maintenance and detect whether there’s localized heating in a motor or other components. By investing in a comprehensive PdM program or even just one facet of one, you set your facility up for success by avoiding surprise shutdowns and emergency maintenance.
However, accidents happen, and the Cornerstone team is happy to help you when they do. If your motor has a loose belt, our technicians can replace it. Bearings fail? We’ll replace those, too. Shaft and impeller misalignment? We’ll perform expert laser alignment services and provide a detailed report with as-found and as-left alignment values, shim changes and other variables to help inform any services your equipment undergoes in the future.
Air Handler Units & Make-Up Air Units
Air handler units and make-up air units both play key roles in creating and maintaining healthy, comfortable indoor environments. They are also vital to your facility’s production, keeping temperature-sensitive equipment in equilibrium. If they’re not well-maintained, it could result in costly downtime and increased energy consumption.
If air flow is uneven, Cornerstone’s reliability technicians can check the fan on an air handler unit or an industrial make-up air unit to see if its bearings are worn down or if components are misaligned. Our team can perform laser alignment services to get fan blades or a motor back in place so you can resume operations.
When dampers malfunction, we can also take a look at the controller to see what’s wrong with the motor. Whether it’s normal wear and tear that has gone unchecked or a case of overheating, Cornerstone can repair or replace your motor entirely. If bearings lose their lubrication, we can replace those as well.
Agitators & Mixers
To facilitate chemical reactions, prevent sediment from forming within a mixture and ensure the highest product quality, you need reliably operating agitators and mixers. If an agitator or a mixer fails, not only does it waste product, but your production screeches to a halt. Avoid this nightmare scenario before it ever happens with help from Cornerstone Mechanical.
Our reliability technicians provide thermal imaging and consultations for tanks and vessels to identify potential problem areas like localized heating in an agitator’s motor. If a product isn’t being mixed thoroughly, a worn down impeller may be to blame. The Cornerstone team will happily repair or replace an impeller so your product can meet the highest quality standards in the industry. An imbalanced impeller may produce abnormal vibrations, and our technicians will provide dynamic balancing services to restore your machinery and eliminate safety hazards caused by excessive vibrations.
If you don’t see the machine that’s giving you a hard time listed above, don’t worry! Our reliability technicians service a wide variety of rotating equipment and would be happy to chat and see how we can serve you. Call 214-570-9498 to learn more about our services and see if we’re the right fit for your facility.