MAAD blog

In my business of providing alignment services, I get to see and work in a lot of harsh environments. In the past, I have written about doing this work in cement plants, which I think are some of the toughest because not only does the cement dust plug up the machines, it’s so abrasive that it wears them out quickly. Recently, I calibrated a laser system that had been used for a long time in a coke plant at a steel mill and I was reminded of just how harsh and very dirty these facilities are. Another example is a plant that makes a nice soft product – but the environment is anything but – it’s a tissue mill. Can you imagine how much nice, soft tissue is used in North America per day? Per hour? Tons! It’s a large industry.

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Not all millwright (construction) and maintenance industries have kept up with today’s machinery installation technologies.

When we think about machinery installation, most tradesmen think of alignment, actually, shaft alignment. The reason for this is because it is usually the most difficult part of the process. It doesn’t have to be but basically, because of inadequate training, even tradesmen who have laser systems are not comfortable with the process and it can still be a hit and miss affair. This is understandable because in many cases, they were shown by the instrument salesman which buttons to push and the rest is up to him! Many companies have laser systems but do not use or even know of their instruments full capabilities!

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Here we are using a laser shaft alignment tool and we have added a D22 swivel laser that can sweep across the base in order to measure flatness in both X and Y coordinates. Before we show you the results let us first show you how we plan to measure. Although the base appears to be two long rails the motor only sits on the shim packs which are positioned under the mounting pads on the motor.

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