Reliability Gang Podcast
Welcome the #Reliabilitygang Podcast! I would like to welcome you all to my reliability journey. I am passionate about reliability and I want to share as much as I can with everyone with my experiences. Stories are powerful and my aim of this outlet is to gather as many insights and experiences and share them with the world. Thanks for joining the #reliabilitygang.
Reliability Gang Podcast
SOLVING SHAFT CURRENT PROBLEMS WITH MARK GURNEY
What if the key to making electric motors more reliable isn’t a complex new technology but a better understanding of the fundamentals of electrical engineering?
In this episode, we sit down with Mark Gurney, a reliability and electrical engineering expert, to hear his journey from troubleshooting issues at biogas plants to leading a full-scale reliability program at an Australian dairy company. Mark takes us behind the scenes of a commonly overlooked problem, electrical fluting in bearings. He breaks down why strong motor management and condition monitoring practices are essential for long-term reliability.
We also dive into the broader impact of electric motors in industrial settings and the small yet powerful maintenance habits that make a difference, like using silica gel packs to keep humidity in check. Mark shares his insights on the importance of cleanliness, professionalism, and passing on knowledge to the next generation of engineers.
You'll hear real-world lessons from his time on biogas sites, including how proper earthing and a structured troubleshooting approach can prevent serious issues like bearing currents. He also highlights the value of hands-on training programs that bridge the gap between theory and practice.
As we wrap up, we touch on upcoming discussions around shaft current problems and thank Mark for sharing his knowledge. We can’t wait to have him back for more.
Hello, welcome back to another episode of the Reliability Gang podcast, and this week we have a very special guest. I'd like to welcome to the show Mark Gurney. How are you keeping Mark? Yeah, well, thanks very much for the invite. This is crazy that we're actually doing this. Mark has been here all week and it seems like you've been here for a while, isn't it, Mark?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, quite a few days he's been solving lots of problems. I.
Speaker 1:Mark yeah, well, quite a few days he's been solving lots of problems. I think because he's solved so many problems, it feels like we've been here just for longer than we actually have been.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we've had two days on site at a biogas plant, and yesterday we had a full day of classroom work.
Speaker 1:Very, very enlightening day, yeah, At least. But you know, mark has kindly come down. We've wanted to do training with you, mark, for quite a long time, to be honest, and it's always been something that we and Will have always said. We've got to get Mark down, we've got to do some training, we've got to try to understand these problems that we're seeing, because, you know, mark pulled up and you see a big box of bearings all with electrical flue and in them and this is one thing we've been experiencing just for such a long time and it's such a high percentage of failure modes we're finding with it. And when, obviously before I, I kind of knew, I've always known of mark on linkedin, I've always seen your posts and everything, and but when I started first seeing Shaft Current a while back, whenever we seeked information, I don't know how I didn't come across you Mark, but it was such a shame because when we're trying to find the solutions, there wasn't really a solution out there at the time. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think it's quite a yeah. There's a lack of knowledge generally in industry of why it happens, um, and you've got to build up that experience of you know, trying different things and and and then eventually you'll work it out on what makes it. Yeah, yeah, 100 blue the bearing, but it's not just the bearing.
Speaker 2:It's a looter bearing. But it's not just the bearing that's so much fun. I mean the electrical discharges you get from an inverter. I mean they'll attack your lubrication and often that'll go black. But also, what a lot of people forget is that it's attacking your motor windings. The winding of the motor. Well, why?
Speaker 1:is that, Mark? We get the windings all the time, don't we? We're always so laser-focused on mechanical bearings. Why do we? Forget the winding all the time.
Speaker 2:Well, a lot of VA people are mechanically based.
Speaker 1:I think so yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're right, there's not too many electrical fellows around.
Speaker 1:But it's so true what Mark is saying, because you know we have, of course, and it's very important to understand all the failure modes, but when we actually do look at reliability, we look at failure modes. You know one of the one, of the one very big failure mode of electric mode, that is this winding. So, yeah, why are we not really treating condition monitoring in the same way on them, as opposed to the mechanical parts?
Speaker 2:I think electrical um professionals tend to get left behind a little bit in component-based maintenance. Yeah, and you know, when a motor fails, you know they get their mega out and they get the resistance multimeter out.
Speaker 1:and they're the only two tests that they tend to use, I know because such a common thing in a electrician's toolbox to say, oh, I've tested the motor and it's like, well, what have you done? Oh, you're making it. They say, oh, I've megged it. Yeah, and that basically means the insulation resistance test, really doesn't it that?
Speaker 2:yeah, that is it and and I mean that that test is only going to um show you that the motor's failed yeah, or very, very close, or very close, yeah, yeah. So it's very unlikely that many electricians will trend it over time. It's usually pull it out when a motor stops and they just confirm that the motor's now not working.
Speaker 1:Oh, mark, where did you start Mark? So obviously we had a great conversation over dinner the other night, didn't we? It was really nice actually, I think for me one thing I love about the reliability game is learning people's journeys like where they started and as well as someone who's had so much experience as well from that conversation and also some of the real early days, the win days, when you know you, you kind of turn around a lot of operations and really started to get involved as well. And one thing I didn't know is your involvement with arp and a lot of the reliability stuff. There's so much I didn't know about mark, I think, and I think the beautiful thing about that dinner was it was just so much more to it than just the guy that sold their incurrence. There was a whole reliability piece. Where did it start for you then? And I'd love the people to hear about that story a little bit in the short form you know, because that was a cool story.
Speaker 2:Yeah well, right out of uni I got involved with maintenance and you know it's been sort of in the blood all the time.
Speaker 2:It's always been there, yeah, but where the opportunity came was when I joined a dairy company in Australia. We had quite a few sites and we had a support of our CEO to increase our reliability because it makes a big impact on the business and the profitability. Yeah, and I got teamed up with two other gentlemen, one who was concentrating mainly on quality and another one on operations. So they were the elements of OEE. It's having everyone together around the process, isn't it? So I mean we actually developed a reliability program that looked at planning and scheduling. You know how to do sort of basic FAMICA analysis and get your PMs going and we included, obviously.
Speaker 1:CM in that as well.
Speaker 2:And you know, like being a young engineer at the time, you make a lot of mistakes, but that's the beautiful thing, though, isn't it?
Speaker 1:You learn from them, don't you? Yeah?
Speaker 2:But then generally you know we were kicking goals and we had the real good support from ours.
Speaker 1:You had a good team, didn't you? You were saying you had a couple of new guys that, like, it was great that you was on board with it and you loved it, but you also had a few people around you that shared the same passion, didn't you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, you see, we had a. It was quite a large company, but because everyone was pulling their weight, you had a lot of support. Some of our maintenance guys at the sites were just so good.
Speaker 1:I know, and I think one of the things I loved about your story was how you as a team did it as well and how important as well even in ARP, when you start to do that course and you start to understand the principles around it how important it is to have people on board. And I think you said one thing really, really crucial and I really remember it when you said it is that when you got the people together and they had the same passion, it just worked, it just clicked.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so what we did is and I think I explained it to you the other day is that we took an electrician and a fitter pretty well much off the tools, but told them not to be part of the reactive maintenance.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So they were there to look at the downtime. Look at you know the top 10 bad actors and have these little projects that made a difference.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that was kind of the reliability part coming, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then we would get all those sites together and they would share those experiences.
Speaker 1:It's like a mark of networking with engineers, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and what happened is that sort of snowballed and it really made quite a big difference and it also made my job very easy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but that's what I think really kind of struck me, because he said, well, well, I just had to get everyone together and they did it. They just did it.
Speaker 2:I mean I ended up paying the hotel bills and the beer and the food.
Speaker 1:It's more price to pay, to be fair. I mean, it's more price to pay when you're trying to win the fight for reliability and you need a client.
Speaker 2:So what happened was one of the very common projects across those sites was about motors, because they're the lifeblood of industry yeah, yeah, they also use close on three quarters of your energy bill. This is phenomenal, isn't it? Yeah, on electrical energy, and it's such a big area that can make a huge amount of inroads, yeah 100%.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think just even what you said there, with it being such a huge part of all of our lives. Yeah, like you look at manufacturing and you look at kind of the impact of what an electric mower does, it drives absolutely everything on that site. You know whether it's a pump or a gearbox or whatever. You have an electric mower that is pulling the industry to where it needs to be. So I think when you start to explain what motor management you know your practice is, it was a bit like why are we overlooking? Why have we been overlooking this for so long? But also, why have I never thought of it in the way that you have in terms of okay, don't get me wrong, we're doing electrical tests with, with some of the equipment that we have, but we're not going into the same depth and detail as we would do if we was doing vibration analysis.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's also really important to understand all of the failure modes, and we, we at Maintain Reliability, have been really conscious about that the last few years. Rather than just trying to do vibration analysis on everything is, look at, you know the reliability and what are the other failure modes? What other technologies can we use to be able to really improve what we're doing. And you know, this week's training for me has been such an eye opener that we can be empowered as well to test for things in a process-driven way. That allows us also to get to the solution fairly quickly if we can have access to that equipment. You know, this week train has been incredible, by the way. It's been amazing.
Speaker 2:I appreciate you coming down, and probably one other point is that you know we developed an overhaul specification and a new purchase specification for electric motors. It's amazing how many defects that you're actually purchasing, um, and we were fortunate enough to bring howard penrose over from the us I think twice, wow, um and he helped us develop that overhaul and purchase specification so that now is part of best practice motor management. Yeah, and that's what you're driving, isn't it? That's what you're teaching us as well. Yeah, and so all the end users that we get involved with they have the free access to all that knowledge and procedures and be able to not make the mistakes that we did. Yeah, and so that you can come up to speed a lot quicker.
Speaker 1:And I love that, because I think that's also one thing that you know we started what I started maintaining in 2017, roughly, and at the start of the journey was difficult, because not everyone would want to share information. There's a lot of people out there, as well that want to keep a lot of the stuff they've learned to themselves, and one thing Mark's done this week as well, which I'm very grateful for, it's not just the fact of course you know we've paid for him to come down. Of course we have to learn from him, but Of course you know we've paid for him to come down. Of course we have to learn from him, but it's his willingness to give. More than that.
Speaker 1:There's a legacy thing there with Mark. It is true, though, isn't it? There's a legacy there, and there's something that drives him to say, years and years, this is going to be this management procedures. Forever is going to be something that can potentially be ingrained in the industry, and if we follow that, better practice actually be ingrained in the industry, and if we follow that better practice, look how much better reliability can be for forever. You know, moving from that point, it's a legacy thing. When it comes down to it, it's something that what you're doing there has a huge effect for many generations to come, with that just philosophy of maintenance and the way you do things, you know.
Speaker 2:I mean I presented at Mobius Manchester. When was it May last?
Speaker 1:year. Yeah, Will was there, wasn't he?
Speaker 2:I think he was there and I got people to all stand up and then I asked a few mechanically minded sit down and we started with about 130-odd people in the room. So the mechanical guys sat down and then I said if you've got an electrical license so you can actually do some work on electrical work, stand up. No, I said, remain standing.
Speaker 1:Okay, both, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:We ended up with five people, that's crazy.
Speaker 1:But what is that? I found that in industry where, even when we was growing up, you was either very electrical or you was mechanical, and if you was mechanical you did not understand electrical, and if you was electrical you wouldn't be able to get the other.
Speaker 2:The problem is that condition-based maintenance industry, be it vibration or ultrasonics or thermography or whatever it is, is very much mechanically biased.
Speaker 1:I agree.
Speaker 2:And you said about the willingness of sharing information. Well, the problem is there's such few electrically-based reliability professionals.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're right, and the problems are huge, I know, and there's only one of you.
Speaker 2:So it's a big pond with a little fish. Yeah, I see that. So I'm not in a position where I need to hold on to that information, because even if I spread it everywhere, I'm still not gonna be.
Speaker 1:I'm still gonna be busy, so it doesn't matter 100, but I love that as well because you know, like the whole, and that's the thing through. So, through the training we went through the philosophy of management, understanding good spare practice, understand where we keep spares, understanding you know lots of different things. It wasn't just how we test a motor and how we test for certain shaft current, it's a philosophy and I think you know. Guys, check out, you've got blogs on this, haven't you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so if people Google just 3PHI reliability, I think I'm on the top list which is really nice of Google, and then if you follow you through to the blog, there's a whole heap of articles, so much information yeah, so lots of content for you guys to go have a look at.
Speaker 1:And have a look at as well the management side of things, because I could probably do 20 podcasts here with Mark today, but we've only got an hour, so we've actually had to have an itinerary before we were going to talk about, because dinner was talking for two, three hours straight and like there was a lot more to say. So obviously, go check that out, but also go check out the motor management side of it. All, the whole part, not just the little bit of testing, not all of that. Look at the whole thing, because when you look at our industry, I don't think this has done enough and I think you know this is something that we've got to shout about and we maintain reliability. Want to shout about this now as well, because you know we're partnering up with mark, you know he's going to be a mentor for us now do you know? I mean, we've done the training, we're going to get some equipment and you know just, it doesn't stop after.
Speaker 2:You don't stop learning from one training session, like no, now these are going to be a million questions.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and I'm already excited to get this kit. I've already ordered it. It's crazy. Last night I was in my basket.
Speaker 2:I'm like oh yeah, I'll have that, I need that, I need one of them, yeah, but it's not just about the different tools of being able to go out and use that instrument to find that fault. I mean, there's some simple stuff. I mean we talked a bit about grease caps.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know, simple little things like grease caps, I mean.
Speaker 2:I've been in the UK now over the last year quite a lot.
Speaker 1:He's basically been there half the time.
Speaker 2:So I've not been to a company where that cleanliness and wiping down the grease nipples and putting a new grease cap on, because I mean, when you do that, you look professional, I agree, and that changes Mindset. Mindset, it improves the culture. So it's these little things. You know how you store your motors. Yeah 100% Okay. We talked about putting silica gel packs in the terminal box and taping them up.
Speaker 1:Because that's the thing we were talking about it. It's humidity that draws into your motor that kills them. That's what we were talking about as well. Regulation of humidity Just by putting a silica gel patch. They're incredible little things, aren't they.
Speaker 2:But you go into a motor store and you see all the cable entries are all open. Yeah, they haven't got the plugs in it's crazy Little things, isn't it?
Speaker 1:And they're the things as well, because we talk about insulation resistance with mowers, and when you've got a mower that is low to earth, they can be extremely horrible defects.
Speaker 2:Well, I can give you an example. I went to a very big manufacturing plant in France last year and we started testing motors in their store and it was a massive store Really. Yeah, it was a steel mill.
Speaker 2:Lots of motors all queued up ready to go and we were testing and we were getting dissipation factor or contamination, in other words, moisture in the motors, and then we found one that was good and I said what's going on? And my host said, oh yeah, that's only been here a few weeks, so I hadn't had time to suck in the moisture.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's the thing Like just something as simple as that can be so detrimental. Yeah, I mean, the motor will still run. Yeah, and that's the thing Like just something as simple as that can be so detrimental, yeah, I mean the motor will still run?
Speaker 2:Yeah, but the problem is that when that insulation gets saturated it's not good for the long-term reliability. It will just start to wear away over time, won't it yeah?
Speaker 1:You've got to keep… there's a reason why we have the standards, isn't it in keeping insulin?
Speaker 2:Well, there's no probably real standard, there's just some.
Speaker 1:I'll bury up my numbers. Yeah, best practice, best practice.
Speaker 2:But management best practice.
Speaker 1:We talk about that a lot today as well. So, yeah, this week, you know, it's been incredible training, and let's go over some of the training stuff that we did. So it was, uh, monday mark come over and we, first of all, we did some testing at a biogas site, didn't we? Yeah right, we had a very big adi compressor, and these are extremely important for the industry. I mean, basically, that adi compressor is the one compressor that's compressing the gas and sending it away to to grid. So if that does fail, the, the whole plant is kaput, it's down. So we went over there and there was quite a big whine on that particular moment. It all has been for a while, wasn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's got that real and very high pitch. You hear that pitch, yeah, horrible pitch. So I mean it wasn't a good install. There's not screen cables on a good install, there's not screen cables. You know, we got the SKF TechEd pin out and it was. The counts were pretty high, high, yeah, yeah, they were yeah. So we were really behind the eight ball on that one to start off with. But what happened? It got changed, I think New Year's Day right. So we're now only what a month or so.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're just into February, aren't we? So about one month and a week, yeah.
Speaker 2:And what happened was one of the external earths, when we had a look, was just flapping in the breeze, so, but you could see where it had been, but it had been on a painted surface, um and um. So even if we had attached the earth back, it wouldn't have done anything, yeah, so we got the emery paper out and, uh, rubbed the um, um paint back to bare metal, cleaned it all up. We actually used a little bit of conductive grease and I've done some testing and that reduces resistance by at least half. Again, wow.
Speaker 1:Just by using some paste. It's crazy.
Speaker 2:We put that earth on. There was a couple of connections in the actual motor terminal box which were loose. Probably wouldn't have helped. Then we obviously did some testing, took some live data of current and then we fired that back up and you could actually hear the pitch changed. Yeah, the audible change in the motor was completely different.
Speaker 1:And it's weird because you know when you get that really high, horrible pitch, but then it's not sometimes the noise, it's how the tone changes. It was so noticeably different on that first one, and that's the really interesting part, because straight away you could tell what we'd done, had made something better.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Straight away, without even the test. So you've got to remember audible. The switching speed on that was about five kilohertz.
Speaker 1:So very high frequency yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, you can hear that very easily. It's actually in the area where it's actually quite nasty for your ears.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's why it was horrible.
Speaker 2:But then you can get the second and third order of those frequencies because they resonate. So the second order is going to be 10,000, then 15,000. I mean, your hearing's good for what?
Speaker 1:What do they say? You hear in an audible 20,000.
Speaker 2:If you're not an old fella.
Speaker 1:Hold the fence.
Speaker 2:So that you can actually walk past a motor and you can actually hear a lot of that inverter. Yeah, so that's obviously the audible range.
Speaker 1:And you're right, it's like an implanted area where your eardrums start to resonate at a point which is uncomfortable.
Speaker 2:So by fixing up that earth um, that noise effectively got attenuated. Now these earthing is probably the number one factor in controlling um bearing currents. It's crazy like and you know it's people jump to all sorts of different what I call band-aids and don't address the root cause.
Speaker 1:And that's the problem, isn't it? Because that is inherently what we're seeing in the industry right now, is people doing things without the right data and information. Okay, we can't be going back to. It's almost like schedule-based maintenance, where you're just doing something for the sake of it without really basing on information. And this is another issue and problem that we have had with the shaft grounding industry.
Speaker 1:I mean, we've seen it as well, where a lot of companies are out there just saying that this solution will solve everything, which is a lie, because when we've done our training this week and we've also understood and realised this as well for a while, without really the real understanding after, mark has given us the kind of and it's crazy, because without Mark's training this week, we would have been so much less wise about the situation but once we've learned about it, it's almost quite.
Speaker 1:It's not obvious, but it's quite A lot of it makes so much sense just from the earthen's perspective of things. So it's like we're almost in this kind of scenario right now within the industry, where we have mark has this knowledge, he has the solution to a lot of what's happening here. But it's not rocket science, that's what he said, but there's a process way that we also have to understand what we're looking for, just like we would troubleshoot a machine when we're trying to do vibration analysis on it. But what he's saying is, look, let's go through the process, let's look at its fundamentals first, you know.
Speaker 2:I mean. On the subject of bearing currents, the issue is that they come in different types and until you measure you don't know what type you have Yep, and sometimes, or most times, you will have a combination of those.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:So you know you take an insulated bearing that's designed to stop circulating current yeah, and it's only one type, and you've got different mitigation strategies for the different types of bearing.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and that's the thing Even on LinkedIn. When everyone's like put it into a bearing on it, it's like, no, it might not be a circulating current, you know.
Speaker 2:So yeah, so you've got to be very, very careful of what you select, but measure first, yeah, 100%, yeah.
Speaker 1:We're now onto the test inside and this is, for me. This was a really fun part, I think, of this training. Just looking at Mark's equipment oh, that's a cool machine. What does that do? Oh, that's measuring something. You know, I think, as you know us, we love that. I've used a lot of vibration analysis equipment in the past and all the gadgets and the toys, but all this was kind of like it looked all very data-collectory but it was very different in the way that it kind of so you know, we've got a range full of tools. I'd love you to go through your tool sets. What's in Mark's tool bag?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, there's some really nice stuff in there. You know like we've got Metal stuff as well, yeah, but also probably the single best one is just the Rogowski coil.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's such a simple concept and an oscilloscope.
Speaker 2:That was great, yeah, so very, very cheap pieces of equipment and they can help you solve a lot of problems.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because what was the oscilloscope? It was a plug-in one to your computer, wasn't it? Yeah, I just use a usb uh one that plugs into my laptop and it was probably one of the best things I've ever. We've had all these other oscilloscopes for this shaft grounding equipment. We've got the fluke scope mirror, but nothing beats on the computer screen. See, in that window it's so easy to read, really easy to put together, really easy to scale between what you want to see. It wasn't cumbersome and all done on your computer you know it's great and it's Ryanair friendly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because it goes straight. It's so exactly.
Speaker 1:But that's the thing as well, mark, what people don't consider. It's like, if you're going to go traveling with this equipment, how do you keep it as well? Really small, yeah, so that's another whole device that you wouldn't necessarily have to bring, because you've already got your laptop and I think it was brilliant. I love that acidoscope really. We've already ordered one, so you know so it's um.
Speaker 2:By taking the measurement with a ragowski coil, uh with a scope, you can pretty well much determine what type of uh bearing current you've.
Speaker 1:So why is it important as well and this, I think, is something really important to note Obviously, rogalski coil testing opposed to shaft voltage testing. Yeah, why is it better to do current tests with a Rogalski coil opposed to trying to take a reading off the shaft? We've seen a lot of these shaft devices and inherently we've used quite a few and they've always been a little bit unstable, if I'm honest. You know, once I see all your tests the other day look very stable in terms of reading, very easy to see the stability in what we was getting current wise. But whenever we've tested with like on the shaft, it's been a little bit subjective, if I'm honest. It's been a bit up, bit down, bit difficult to really kind of, yeah, average out, you know um, I asked a question, the the subject's called bearing current yeah so we measure current yeah, 100, love that and that's to see, with all these other people trying to push devices as well.
Speaker 2:Well, you know and the problem is is that? Um, don't get me wrong, the shaft voltage is a good indicator. Yeah, but it's also dependent on lubrication quality. Okay, of course. So if you've freshly greased a bearing and you take shaft voltage, you're going to get a different reading than if it's dry.
Speaker 1:Dry, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So you've got to keep that in mind, whereas if you measure the bearing current from straight off the bottom of the inverter, then you're getting a good reading.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 100%. We see that, we generally see that. So I remember seeing it on the oscilloscope and it was very clear, yeah, and it was very clear as well after we'd done some earthing afterwards the difference that we was finding within the stray currents was actually phenomenal. Yeah, the difference that we were finding within the stray currents was actually phenomenal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I've just late. Last year we did a bit of a tour through Bulgaria and those nearby countries and we actually were measuring peak to peak, common mode, current or bearing current versus the lubrication condition and what we found there is that when you get optimum lubrication and using SDT, ultrasonics, there's the plug, love it, there's the plug, love it. Well, what happens?
Speaker 1:is it when you get optimum lubrication conditions, your common mode current drops? Yeah, of course.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're saying so so it's, it's, there's, there's quite a lot of factors, and that is, and that's the thing as well about poor lube.
Speaker 1:I mean, how many times as well? With a couple of the case studies I showed Mark as well, one being when they ate over lubricated but mixed the two different thickeners of lithium and polyurea, how quickly the shaft current destroyed the bearing from that was phenomenal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it's probably going. I mean it would have had an effect, probably, on the lubrication film, yeah, and once you get that metal on metal contact, it's new gone, aren't you? Well then you've got a conductive surface, yeah.
Speaker 1:And it's going to really accelerate the wear and the bearing. And this is also why you know obviously it's great to understand kind of your mower testing and what you're finding, but even more importantly, the proactive nature of really doing lubrication properly. And this is another thing as well, which is another simple one, which a lot of people don't realize that you know poor lubrication is everywhere. You know we see it so many different places still. And it's another proactive measure as well that has a huge effect on shaft current as well. And we're seeing that. You know massively Well, we had one site where the service kind of the service well, you know they have service agreements with compressor companies, for example, but they put self-greases on these mowers and they completely overclocked them and the effect that had on the majority of these drives you know even where we went.
Speaker 1:We see that. Do you know what I mean? And they've taken them off now. But the problem is at the time the damage was so quick to occur because of this combination of having really poor earthing and really over lubricating the bearing and them two things together were taking bearings out very quickly. You know you're talking, you know nought to six months, you know, in terms of having to intervene on the maintenance side. It's crazy isn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's quite a number of factors that make a bearing prone to bearing fluting. I quite like reading and sharing. There was a paper put out October 23 by Damstrad University.
Speaker 1:Is that the document?
Speaker 2:you showed us, yeah, the other day. Yeah, yeah, and there's quite a nice list of dominant factors that affect bearing fluting and it's a damn good read.
Speaker 1:I think I'm going to read that one. Yeah, that's going to be a nice bedtime.
Speaker 2:you know what I mean and effectively the experiences that we've had with getting the low, getting the low impedance earth from a motor and taking away that bearing current to earth through the motor frame and not down through the rotor. Well, really, that research really reinforces what we've learned.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and what you taught as well, theory-wise as well, yeah, hands-on, yeah, definitely, and even the theory stuff as well. I mean, I did a HND in electrical and electronic engineering, but I went into wind and mowers, which was great, but then I went into this mechanical kind of world. So a lot of what Mark was saying was like ringing back in my old days really, when I was back at college and understanding some electrical principles actually, and I think this is why I've enjoyed it so much. Actually, I think I really think I was destined to be an electrical engineer and I went into mechanical and now I'm coming back, I'm coming back around the other way, but it's always nice to know both. But this is I the lack of knowledge of having engineers that can do both and really understand Because, you know, mike is, for me, is someone who understands both very well, but it also makes him a beast when it comes down to trying to find problems, because he's looking at the full palette.
Speaker 1:He's looking at the full spectrum of problems as opposed to just maybe half of them. So I think this is as well. You know what the industry needs. We need more people that are able to tap into both sides, really aren't we? And understand principles and failure modes on electrical sides and mechanical, because if we can get them two people right, the future of the industry looks a lot brighter, doesn't?
Speaker 2:it. Oh, yeah, for sure, yeah, yeah, I mean, I was fortunate that my, when I did my engineering, we had both mechanical, electrical Was it like a split 50-50 then. And instrumentation.
Speaker 1:Nice, yeah, because usually it's just one of the three, really isn't it, because you've got the control instrumentation side as well. But to be able to have all three sides of that was probably a really good apprenticeship.
Speaker 2:Yeah, wow. So yeah, it was a good grounding. It was probably one of the best um decisions I made. Yeah, I can imagine early on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely yeah, because I don't think people get too exposed to. I mean again, when it comes down to electrical and mechanical, it's quite funny because you go to site and you've got electrical teams and mechanical teams and they have so much banner with each other because they don't understand each other.
Speaker 2:It's very like you almost get. You know, I've been in situations where, where you know the problem is being electrical and then the mechanical guys go because now it's not their problem Exactly. Then you get marks. Oh well, I'm a survivor, you know what I mean. Love it, absolutely. Love it no that's great.
Speaker 1:Then you get marks like well, I'm a survivor. You know what I mean. Love it, absolutely love it. No, that's great. So this week we've been obviously with training. On Monday we did some kind of some good theory in the practice. But one thing I really loved about the training this week was the theory and the practical and even in the classroom side of taking some of the results, seeing them on the screen and seeing what the difference and what we did as well. Do you know what I mean? So the training side, I think for you is something. How long have you kind of really been doing the train, is it? Obviously it's quite picked up quite a lot now, hasn't it the last few years?
Speaker 2:for you is really started to take off. Yeah, I mean I've done a number of these types of sessions for people and I've got a few more next week.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he's got a lot booked for this year as well. I think we're going to get Mark down again for a customer up north, because that's going to be really interesting. We've got plenty of great things to teach them and our northern team, because they couldn't be with us this week, but they'll be able to jump on that. But I think the training of this is really where the beauty is now isn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you've got to realise that I'm still learning, yeah that's the thing. And every time I go to a site I learn something different, and then I add that to the training Love it. It's just an ongoing.
Speaker 1:So it's a and that's what will happen Next time I go on Mark's training, or whatever I.
Speaker 2:And that's what will happen Next time I go on Mark's training or whatever I'll be like oh, that's a new added little bit, that will be good. Well, I know that picture.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's me. That's the case study that we did. But that's the beautiful thing about it as well, that the training consists of finding problems and solving them. What I do love about that, it's not just oh, I've got some training, I'm in a classroom. Here's some examples. It's no, we're doing it. We're solving one of these today and, you know, for the biogas side, we went to a. You know, we've solved, we've massively reduced the shaft current on both of them assets. Do you know what I mean by a considerable amount, huge amount, and these two assets were getting severely fluid and it's amazing. I'm just so happy.
Speaker 2:That is what we solved the problem for the customer. But there's another issue. There is that we haven't finished the job.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's still some bits to do.
Speaker 2:You know, we had some EMC glands that were grounding the screen to the motor and unfortunately they've used some that have got like a plastic insert and they haven't been installed properly. Um, so that means that the screen was floating at the motor end yeah, okay um.
Speaker 2:So it doesn't really matter how much external worse or the pe's that wouldn't paint that we rubbed off, we've got to to change the glands and get them installed properly. Yeah, get some connection. And I'm very, very confident that after that gets done, that the bearing common mode current will drop to very, very low, minimal levels.
Speaker 1:And that's crazy because these, you know the bearings are going to actually probably actually put in the video now because we've got these Barons. This was the damage on the Barons. It was crazy, it was so destructive, and you know this is. You know we're just excited now as well, because we also understand that not overnight we're going to become Baron current experts, you know. But one thing that we are doing with Mark is he's going to mentor us through this. You know there's going to be a few troubleshooting things out in the field. We've even talked about getting some fancy glasses like in-the-field glasses and stuff like that, which is so cool.
Speaker 2:So I mean I have used and I've got a pair of AR glasses. You know they have a little computer screen in front of you. One is your eye, a little computer screen in front of you, but what it means is that someone that's solving a problem they dial in voice activated with Microsoft Teams and then Mike can see everything and I see what they see you can annotate on there as well, and all sorts of cool stuff as well.
Speaker 2:So you can coachate on there as well and all sorts of cool stuff as well, so you can coach people, yeah, and I mean I've done this, um, you know, um, I had a client in new york state, um, and I was sitting in my office in france. Yes, the time difference was not nice, but we were able to instruct them virtually.
Speaker 1:I love that, and that's where we need to go. We've got to use technology to be able to, because knowledge is there. It's just about the application of it and how do you help people from afar? And this is what we've got to lean into. This is new technology that we've got to, and I just found that pretty cool. Now it's about it doesn't matter where you are in the world. You've got the knowledge pool out there to be able to support.
Speaker 2:And you know, Mark, supporting on the other end of the world is a cool thing, and it's not too bad for an old fella to get into that technology. I love that, though, as well.
Speaker 1:He embraces his technology like all us do you know we totally advocate for that as well. So, mike, it's been incredible week and honestly I can't thank you enough for for coming down and and lining us all. Do you know what I mean? It's been. It's been honestly I'm actually sad to see him go. She can stay a little bit longer, but for us to be able to go out and and go solve and everything like that. But, mark, I'd like to thank you so much for for jumping on the podcast. We've had a just a good 40 minute session yeah, well, 40, isn't it?
Speaker 1:yeah, wow, plenty. I don't know. I don't even know where that time's gone. It does not feel like I've been talking for 40 minutes at all. We try to keep them to 30 minutes, but, let's be honest, it's a bit of a special occasion really when you come in to to have a chat. But yeah, we'll definitely get mark on a part two. I think when you next come over down here we can maybe dive a little bit deeper into the into like more of the shaft current stuff a little bit. I don't want to get too deep today. We can, we can give, we can give them a little bit more, give them a bit of a teaser so they can come and come and join in a little bit later. But, mark I, I'd like to thank you for joining this week and thanks for being on the show, buddy. Yeah, well, thank you very much. Yeah, it was awesome. Take care, guys.
