Shaft alignments? There’s an app for that!

Laser Align is a free reference tool for aligning shafts on rotating equipment. The software also links to information about Prueftechnik alignment products such as the Rotalign Ultra, Optalign Smart, Shaftalign, and Aligneo. Information is also available on monitoring, vibration, and balancing products such as the Vibxpert, Vibscanner, and Vibnode.

LUDECA

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Finally, vibration acceptance levels for wind turbines

The wind energy sector presents many variables that make reliability and maintenance a challenge for all involved with wind power plants. Wind Turbines, by reason of their design, location of installation and operation, do not abide by any international standard for vibration.

According to DIN ISO, condition-based maintenance for wind power plants means to maintain, visually inspect, measure, and analyze the condition of the turbines and perform required repairs.  However, how can one measure and evaluate vibration components of wind turbines when they have been excluded from international standards?

To increase reliability, uptime and operation of wind turbines, the Association of German Engineers, Verein Deutscher Ingenieure (VDI), in collaboration with manufacturers, such as Prueftechnik Condition Monitoring, Ludeca’s principals, helped in developing the VDI 3834 vibration and evaluation standard for wind power plants.  The VDI 3834 standard will help to close the gap between this and other well established standards for threshold values of specific components. This means that vibration signals of wind power turbines are no longer a problem to measure and evaluate when using a vibration analyzer such as Vibxpert and its Omnitrend PC software which both feature built-in VDI measurement standards.

“Manufacturers and plant operators can now benefit from utilizing the vibration threshold values of drive train components. Consequently, they can deal with the challenge of maintaining these components in well running conditions. Proper alignment between the drive train and balancing of the rotor blades are important to condition monitoring of wind turbines…”, says Dr. Edwin Becker, Prueftechnik’s head of the service and diagnostic center.

Laser alignment sets generators straight

A laser aligning device lets maintenance crews align main shafts with generators for low vibration, thereby improving equipment reliability. Manufacturer Ludeca

, Doral, Fla., says its Optalign Smart Wind comes with firmware features that ensure high measurement accuracy, and mounting hardware. The company adds that the unit works on turbines regardless of OEM or coupling.

The development features a continuous-sweep measurement mode which evaluates hundreds of readings during shaft rotation. This compares to shooting a movie versus a few pictures at intervals. The result is less shimming and horizontal moves to correct alignment, because of the more accurate measurements. Other features include:

• Alignment results after three easy steps: Dimension, measure, and evaluate results
• Minimum rotation required, 60° at sensor separation
• Graphical results (machines and centerlines)
• High resolution color backlit TFT screen
• Static measure mode allows up to 8 measurement positions for improved accuracy
• Save up to 500 measurement files