The benefits of a predictive maintenance strategy are well understood among plant and maintenance engineers in improving productivity by reducing planned and unplanned equipment downtime, as well as reducing maintenance costs by only undertaking service activities when it is required.
However, to realise these benefits requires accurate and reliable monitoring techniques to determine the health of the equipment, pinpoint an issue indicating when a service intervention is required. There are many methods and techniques for doing this and monitoring the lubricating oil - a machines’ blood supply - is one of the most effective for providing a very early indication of potential problems, allowing the most time for remedial action to be undertaken avoiding a catastrophic breakdown.
Gill Sensors and Controls introduced their innovative and market leading Oil Condition Sensor over 12 months ago and it bought to the market a compact, multi-parameter sensor that made oil analysis simple, accurate and real-time. Capable of measuring both fine wear and coarse failure ferrous debris independently, along with water in oil contamination and oil presence or temperature, the sensor makes available some of the key condition monitoring parameters for oil lubricated machinery in one device.
With a powerful magnet in the tip of the sensor to capture all the debris in the oil, the sensor can be installed in either an oil sump or an oil line. Because the sensor can provide the high insight value measurement parameters to both new and retrofit installations means that the number of mounting locations the sensor can be installed in is broad and diverse.
To meet the high demand from Engineers to take advantage of the benefits of the Gill sensor to improve the reliability performance of their oil lubricated plant, Gill has responded to their requests for a larger range of mounting options, making it even easier to install the sensor. By careful re-engineering of the sensor by their in-house design team, Gill can now offer a total of 17 thread mounting options, covering popular sizes and thread profiles, including Metric, UNF and BSPP.
Gill’s Product Manager, Simon Foulser said “We have listened to the feedback from our customers for a greater range of mounting options and this is the first stage of our response, making it easier to reap the benefits of this innovative condition monitoring sensor. We have more enhancements planned for later this year to further meet our customers’ needs and broaden the availability of the sensor.”
For more information please visit gillsc.com/condition
