Schoeneck Containers (SCI) i-ALERT2 Success Story

Video Transcript

Hello, I'm Bill Bushman, I'm the facility engineer here at Schoeneck Containers. Schoeneck Containers as a company is about 40 years old. We're considered a custom blow molder. We blow mold plastic containers for customers that want a custom container or if they have their own stock container, we will take their designs and manufacture containers for them.

In a critical systems, like the cooling tower and chilled water systems, all of our pumping and compressed air, we've got to maintain a primary and backup system since we're a 24/7 operation. Some years we go based on customer demand that we might not have a planned shutdown, so we've got to have a system in place that can support us 24/7, and not allow any downtime to the production lines. The roll of the two split case pumps are basically main cooling tower pumps, they provide all the cooling for our centrifugal chillers, they provide cooling for all of our hydraulics, they provide cooling for all the air compressors and air dryers. So between the air compressors and the mold cooling for the blow molding machines, without cooling water to supply those pieces of equipment, it brings the entire plant to a halt.

The first pump was truly the amount of vibration you could actually feel through the floor where the pump was mounted to, the pump base itself. We could identify the vibration even after an alignment, there was in issue of an ongoing vibration problem that the only way to identify it was to pull the pump apart and inspect it and see what was truly going on. And the maintenance records weren't clear on when the last time a complete overhaul was done on that particular pump, so it was time for a complete teardown and inspection.

Hi, I'm Chris Johnson from Crane Engineering. Initially we were going to try to do it in place, but when you open up a split case pump it can be a can of worms. All the sudden, he can have half a pump sitting there, waiting on parts and pieces, waiting for things to be made and manufactured. Doing it in house is a lot easier and you have all the right tools to do the job.

Both pumps were in similar condition, they both had vibration issues. So, at the point that we had taken the first one out, it was "let's take the worse one out of the two and hope the other one holds out until the other one is completed". And that was the whole point of putting the i-ALERT2 on that second pump, was so for peace of mind we could monitor that pump while the other pump was in the shop. And in case we noticed an increase in vibration or performance issues that started to trend, using the trending portion of the application. We could say this repair has gone from a just normal time frame of a repair to an emergency repair.

I would definitely advise for the i-ALERT2 just for the point that we've had vibration analysis tools to use in the past but they were just point-of-use type tools where you put them on for a short period of time, take some readings, and you move it from machine to machine. But you're just capturing such a small snapshot of the operating condition. Where the i-ALERT2 is always on that piece of equipment, it's relatively inexpensive, you can go to it every day or every other day, or make out a certain schedule that you're going to download the settings and run data and see your trend. It's not something you have to hook up and take off every day, so the convenience of it is really the key point.