Screw conveyor: FS team avoids 6h downtime and loss of nearly $80,000 using Dynamox Solution

The monitoring of the ground corn screw conveyor prevented an unplanned stoppage and a loss of almost $100,000. Take a look!

FS Fueling, powered by the Dynamox solution, is redefining predictive maintenance standards for its assets, presenting a series of success stories that have resulted in significant time savings, increased productivity and financial optimization. This time, the company managed to save around $80,000 through monitoring and implementing scheduled maintenance on a ground corn screw conveyor.

Screw Conveyor

The process began when the equipment started showing vibration levels slightly above normal, at the beginning of December, exceeding the A1 Alert level. This was established by the customer as a point of attention on the Dynamox Web Platform. Faced with this situation, the FS Fueling team adopted a proactive approach, closely monitoring the asset’s behavior, hoping to identify any potential evolution of the problem.

On December 28th, the RMS Acceleration levels of the horizontal axis of the screw conveyor reducer spiked, exceeding the Platform’s Alert A2 parameters. This sudden increase prompted the maintenance team to thoroughly inspect the equipment. At this time, the defect in the intermediate shaft bearing was identified: a failure involving the raceway and the bearing cage.

Analysis – screw reducer

Once the defect had been identified, the team decided that the screw conveyor reducer needed to be replaced. This part of the asset is in a place that is difficult to access and changing the reducer is a complex task.

Therefore, a maintenance shutdown was scheduled for January 22nd and, until then, the asset was constantly monitored on the Web Platform. On the day of the shutdown, it took the FS team around 1 hour and 50 minutes to change the reducer and get the asset up and running again. The graph shows that, after the replacement, the vibration levels returned to their normal operating levels.

Talking to FS’s predictive maintenance specialist, Victor Brandão, he pointed out that if the problem had not been identified in time to carry out scheduled maintenance, the stoppage for corrective maintenance would have taken around 6 hours, damaging the production process much more.

For comparison purposes, the 1h50min stoppage that was carried out resulted in a loss of approximately $60,000 in production, while an unscheduled 6h stoppage would result in a loss of approximately $140,000. In other words, savings of approximately $80,000 were achieved.

See photos of the replaced gearbox, bearing and cage below: