The goal of every maintenance team is to keep everything running at maximum efficiency and avoid costly downtime. Achieving it requires a proactive approach to asset maintenance, so you can identify and mitigate problems before they send your operation grinding to a halt. In the past, there wasn’t too much you could do to prevent downtime, so it just became a necessary evil. Equipment would be run until it failed. When it broke down, it was fixed or replaced. But as you know that’s an expensive and unpredictable way to do business and leads to shorter equipment life cycles and increased replacement and labor costs.
Today, you have other options. As industrial equipment has become more automated and troubleshooting tools have become more affordable, accurate, and available, an increasing number of industrial operations take a more proactive approach to maintenance. In this article, we’ll detail several recent products releases from Fluke designed to help your team find and fix problems before they become costly failures.
Thermal Imaging Solutions from Fluke
Heat is often one of the earliest and most reliable signs of equipment damage or malfunction. Thermal imaging solutions empower your team to regularly check the temperature of critical equipment and track operating conditions over time so anomalies can easily be identified and addressed.
Fluke’s Ti480 PRO Infrared Camera is a state-of-the-art solution that delivers vital thermal feedback used in industrial preventive maintenance programs. It offers increased thermal sensitivity to capture minute differences and the latest Fluke technology for on-screen clarity, making it easy to identify visual issues in the field. The Ti480 PRO features sharp on-screen images with clear visual color differentiation, allowing for quicker troubleshooting. It displays deviation from standard temperatures using multiple Delta-T markers, allowing you to choose one as a reference point and the others to display a value as a difference.
As part of the Fluke Connect® reliability platform, the wireless Ti480 PRO allows you to upload infrared images from anywhere and combine them with measurement data from multiple Fluke Connect test tools to create and share comprehensive reports from the job site via email, collaborating in real time with colleagues and increasing productivity in the field.
Identify and Address Leaks with Fluke ii900 and ii910 Acoustic Imagers
Invisible threats like leaks in compressed air, gas, steam, and vacuum systems exist throughout your facility, threatening to hurt both production uptime and operational bottom line. Most manufacturers are aware these problems exist, but addressing them has historically been too time-consuming and tedious to be realistic. The Fluke ii900 and ii910 have changed all of that. With minimal training, your maintenance team now has the power to add “checking for leaks” to their typical industrial preventive maintenance routines, even during peak operation hours.
The ii900 series acoustic imagers enable your technicians to see sound as they scan hoses, fittings, and connections for leaks. It features a built-in acoustic array of tiny sensitive microphones that generate a spectrum of decibel levels per frequency. Using this output, an algorithm calculates a sound image, known as SoundMapTM, that is superimposed on a digital image. The SoundMap is automatically adapted depending on the frequency level selected so the background noise is filtered out, making it incredibly simple to detect compressed gas leaks.
The ii910 features all the functionality of the ii900, but with increased sensitivity to detect leaks that are smaller or farther away. Fluke also recently released a new upgrade to the ii910 called MecQ. Together, the two are a powerful solution that can significantly reduce unplanned downtime by locating potential issues in conveyor systems so they can be addressed on your maintenance schedule.
Overcome Power Quality Issues with Tools from Fluke
Fluke offers a wide variety of tools to help you identify power quality and energy efficiency issues with easy and effective recording and analysis. Power quality issues can be notoriously difficult to identify. Whether you’re trying to uncover hard-to-find intermittent problems, working to find and eliminate reoccurring issues, or attempting to discover potential savings by conducting load studies, Fluke has a tool for your arsenal.
Fluke power quality tools enable you to quickly and easily take measurements when and where you need to. Flexible and powerful software is included with every Fluke power quality tool, allowing you to see and react to valuable insights regarding the performance of your electrical system. They even have a convenient online quiz to help you identify the tool best suited to your needs and issues.
Agilix Solutions + Fluke: Your Partners in Downtime Prevention
Understandably, nobody wants to think about the worst case scenarios that lurk within your facilities. But not thinking about them doesn’t make them any less of a threat. Agilix Solutions is your connection to a wide variety of solutions from Fluke designed to help you identify problems early, stay on top of industrial preventive maintenance, and get your best nights’ sleep, knowing you’re not leaving your uptime to chance. Reach out to your Account Manager or your local Agilix Solutions branch to discuss best-fit thermography solutions for your industrial operation.