Beyond Snapshots: Motor/Machine Monitoring System Improves Maintenance Decision-Making

The SKF Online Motor Analysis System — NetEP is a permanent motor/machine system monitoring solution that works continuously to acquire health and performance data on electric motors and the rotating machinery with which they operate. With NetEP, maintenance professionals can monitor motor-system health and performance 24/7/365 from virtually anywhere in the world, via the product’s Web-accessible interface. Reflecting a new predictive-maintenance paradigm, the system effectively provides critical motor assets with the ability to communicate that they are malfunctioning or experiencing problems.

According to SKF, motor-maintenance programs are too often characterized by reactive approaches to failures. They also typically rely on testing to troubleshoot a given motor’s condition. While these types of snapshots can help determine if a unit needs to be repaired or replaced, the acquired data frequently doesn’t reveal serious system issues that can impact motor performance or cause failure. The NetEP goes beyond what portable snapshot testing does to provide a continuous timeline of trend data that maximizes visibility into motor-system health and performance.

As the company explains, this system isn’t designed to replace route-based maintenance tests using portable equipment, but complements use of portable motor analyzers such as SKF’s Baker AWA-IV or EXP4000 to minimize catastrophic motor failures and costly unplanned downtime. It can also be used to supply motor-system data into an OPC standard server for use with a site’s unique maintenance-management and asset-analysis systems.

This system can monitor up to 32 motors over as many as seven voltage busses from a single motor-control cabinet. It acquires data on power quality, distortion peak levels, unbalances, crest factor and symmetrical component data. It gathers spectral data for current, torque and voltage, and monitors motor speed, rotor bar, eccentricity, power out, percent load, percent efficiency, effective service factor, input power, power factor and torque time waveforms. It employs a sequential data acquisition method to record information from each motor connected to the system.

The NetEP cabinet is the permanently installed measurement engine; the NetEP server (connected via Ethernet to a secure computer network) manages data storage and communication to an organization’s computer network resources, including the Internet. The system’s Surveyor NetEP software is the user interface and application navigation system for viewing condition status of all connected motors and machinery. It all adds up to continuous visibility into the health and performance of critical motor systems that businesses and organizations depend upon for revenue and profitability. MT

SKF CMC-Fort Collins
Fort Collins, CO