The Beginner’s Guide to Automation: Maintaining Your System

It’s important to keep your system up and running without regular intervention. While every system requires maintenance, never overlook the critical importance of tools and training for the operators. Once an automation system is up and running, it’s crucial to ensure it continues running smoothly with minimal effort on your part. While it’s never a … Read more

Common Sources of Failures in Mechanical Systems

What causes mechanical failure? Learn about three major sources of failure points in any mechanical assembly and a few tips to minimize failure. Mechanical motion systems are prone to problems that require regular maintenance. If properly maintained, then costly repairs can sometimes be avoided. Most of the preventive types of maintenance revolve around trying to … Read more

Measurement Tools for Mechanical Maintenance

This article explores what tools can be used to predict and prevent costly mechanical breakdown events occurring from heat, vibration, or humidity. Mechanical failure in a machine can lead to lengthy and expensive downtime. Although the problems may be easy to spot when they occur, the replacement of failed components can take a longer time … Read more

The Importance of Material Selection in Manufacturing

The following will take a step back from IoT and machine data to see how engineering practices such as material selection and CAD can do more with less. IoT, connected devices, and other technologies are driving digital manufacturing. However, accelerating design cycles and shorter product life cycles can create stress on production lines. Starting a … Read more

Vibration Monitoring in Predictive Maintenance (PdM)

Advanced automation and IoT devices can detect vibration, but even complex systems can miss a variable and cause chaos. Working with these systems requires years of experience in order to understand the importance of errors. Things don’t always add up and occasionally there seems to be some problem or variable happening behind the scenes that … Read more