When to replace industrial bearings

[Teras]

Good morning folks. I am trying to set up a better maintenance schedule for our factory. How do you guys decide when it is time to replace your parts? Do you wait for noise and vibration, or do you have a specific timeline for preventative maintenance?

 

[Leonop]

That is the age-old question in maintenance. I used to wait until I heard a squeal, but that usually meant the shaft was already damaged. Now, I am much more proactive. I use BearingHive https://bearinghive.com/ to keep track of the expected service life for the specific bearings we use. It is a great resource for finding the technical manuals and life-cycle data for industrial parts. I find that replacing them at about eighty percent of their rated life saves us a lot of emergency repair costs. The platform makes it easy to source replacements quickly so we always have them on hand. My advice is to monitor vibration levels and use the data on the site to plan your downtime.