I am curious has to how many of you have used your airborne ultrasound receiver "ROUTINELY" to scan an assembly line, production line, for air (pressure/vacuum)leaks, gearboxes and/or other anomalies such as a bearing squealing or failed.
This is one of those "Preventive/predictive" applications that ultrasound can be used to possibly make a difference as to how much down-time an assembly or production line may have.
Some positives and negative remarks would be appreciated.

Hi Jim,
I have several times used ultrasound to scan long conveyor belts. Vibration data collection on hundreds of carring or return rolls would be very time consuming. Walking along these with the airborn module you can hear squeeks and scrapes. When you locate an area with the loudest amplitude, switch to the contact probe to identify the exact location. Then spray a mark with a can of paint so the mechanic knows which ones to replace. You need to be carefull as the belt sliding over the top of a roller will also create "static". You get an ear for it after a while.
Most industry run these small rolls until they fall appart and can be seen or heard. This is the point when they're most likely to cause a fire from friction.
Good stuff for wood yards where fire damage can be costly.
Pete

Exactly what I was looking for. Not only is the Prevent/Predictive in mind but safety as well. This is the sort of application that ultrasound should be widely used for. After all it is an extension of your ears, just a little higher frequency. Thanks alot.
WHATS YOUR STORY? I KNOW OTHERS OUT THERE HAVE SIMILAR STORIES, LETS HEAR THEM.

IMHO (In My not so Humble Opinion) , I have

Attached is a paper represented at a Mechanical Engineering Congress in 2002, this is the translated version.

How it all started:
In our (new) oil refinery we were plagued by a persistend steam leak on a condensate header in 1999. It could not be repaired without depressurizing the whole system. The leak was at a T connection and was getting every day bigger and bigger. At that time I was an Operations shift supervisor in my morning shift.
The appearent solution: shutdown the boilers, sacrifice the production of the day and when the system was depressurized, repair the leak. Not the kind of solution mgmt was willing to enforce

So I took my crew and the maintenance clan and we opened every vent en drain on the condensate headers, disconnected all steamtraps (400+) and condensate manifolds (spirax sarco types) to discharge their load to the atmosphere. On a sunny day smog (steam) everywhere!. This operation started at 8:00 am and at 15:50 the welders where able to weld on the depressurized condensate return header, without a plant shutdown. At 15:00 hours I was released, but I stayed on the plant untill the job was done (mission accomplished I thought).
The next morning in the operations-maintenance meeting, the maintenance foreman stated that only after my substitute came in, maintenance was able to the job, (the usual CYA politics) and I was not pleased , spectators told me after that I almost bite the guy, now he is retired and still on of my best friends.

Out of frustration I mapped together with my crew every trap to have a tool to quickly isolate all tracers, headers and manifolds, without walking the whole plant and use the trial and error method.
In this process airborne ultrasound detection came into the picture and it ended with the system described in the paper.

Now in 2006 I am in another role, this paper was written from an operations perspective, now I am at the other side of the table, but all parties have excepted this practice. Where in the first 2 years, steam leaks where tackled when Mr. Ultrasound had duty, nowadays operaters and maintainers work in the system and bring ideas to extend it.

• The steam consumption dropped.
  
• Pumps do not trip any more when we have rain and bad wheather.
  
• We don't account anymore on lip service to discuss which valve must be isolated to repair a certain tracer.
  
• One boiler handles half of the load we used to.
  
• I am free to focus on other important stuff.
  

Observation: It took nearly 2 weeks to reconnect all the traps (when I had morning duty again)

This message has been edited. Last edited by: svanels,

Conem_trans1.pdf (226 Kb, 13 downloads) Trap management