Page 11 - Machinery Component Maintenance

Foreword

A machinery engineer’s job was accurately described by this ad, which ap-
peared in the classified section of the New York Times on January 2, 1972:
Personable, well-educated, literate individual with college
degree in any form of engineering or physics to work . . . Job re-
quires wide knowledge and experience in physical sciences, mate-
rials, construction techniques, mathematics and drafting. Compe-
tence in the use of spoken and written English is required. Must be.
willing to suffer personal indignities from clients, professional de-
rision from peers in more conventional jobs, and slanderous in-
sults from colleagues.
Job involves frequent physical danger, trips to inaccessible loca-
tions throughout the world, manual labor and extreme frustration
from lack of data on which to base decisions.
Applicant must be willing to risk personal and professional fu-
ture on decisions based on inadequate information and complete
lack of control over acceptance of recommendations . . .
Well, that was in 1972. Since then, however, the job has not become any sim-
pler. The cost of machinery outages and repairs has escalated. The prerequisites
required to be able to perform as a machinery engineer could even be expanded
thus:
A knowledge of stress analysis, measurement techniques, in-
strumentation, vibration analysis, materials, machine shop proce-
dures, fluid flow, rotor dynamics, machinery field erection and
startup procedures, and an understanding of effective maintenance
management.
This list is by no means complete. And since very few of us feel absolute mas-
ter of all of these areas, we seek guidelines, procedures, and techniques that
have worked for our colleagues elsewhere. Collecting these guidelines for every
machinery category, size, type, or model would be almost impossible, and the
resulting encyclopedia would be voluminous and outrageously expensive.
Therefore, the only reasonable course of action has been to be selective and as-
semble the most important, most frequently misapplied or perhaps even some of
the most cost-effective maintenance, repair, installation, and field verification
procedures needed by machinery engineers serving the refining and petrochemi-
cal process industries.
This is what my colleagues, Heinz P. Bloch and Fred K. Geitner, have suc-
ceeded in doing. Volume 3 of this series on machinery management brings us the
know-how of some of the most knowledgeable individuals in the field. Engi-
neers and supervisors concerned with machinery and component selection, in-
stallation, and maintenance will find this an indispensable guide.
Here, finally, is a long-needed source of practical reference information which
the reader can readily adapt to similar machinery or installations in his particular
plant environment.
Uri Sela
Walnut Creek, California
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