Guide to Machinery Component Maintenance and Repair--Table of Contents; Introduction

Part I: Background to Process Machinery Maintenance Programming

• 1. Machinery Maintenance: An Overview
• 2. Maintenance Organization and Control for Multi-Plant Corporations
• 3. Machinery Foundations and Grouting [part 1, part 2]
• 4. Process Machinery Piping

Part II: Alignment and Balancing

• 5. Machinery Alignment
• 6. Balancing of Machinery Components

Part III: Maintenance and Repair of Machinery Components

• 7. Ball Bearing Maintenance and Replacement
• 8. Repair and Maintenance of Rotating Equipment Components
• 9. Centrifugal Compressor Rotor Repair
• 10. Protecting Machinery Parts Against Loss of Surface

Introduction

A machinery engineer's job was accurately described by this ad, which appeared 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 requires wide knowledge and experience in physical sciences, materials, construction techniques, mathematics and drafting. Competence in the use of spoken and written English is required. Must be willing to suffer personal indignities from clients, professional derision from peers in more conventional jobs, and slanderous insults from colleagues.

Job involves frequent physical danger, trips to inaccessible locations 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 future on decisions based on inadequate information and complete lack of control over acceptance of recommendations...

The situation has not changed. As these words are written, there is an even greater need to 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 assemble 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 petrochemical process industries.

This is what my colleagues have succeeded in doing. This guide on machinery management brings us the know-how of some of the most knowledgeable individuals in the field. Engineers and supervisors concerned with machinery and component selection, installation, and maintenance will find this an indispensable guide.

Here, then, is an updated source of practical reference information which the learner can readily adapt to similar machinery or installations in his particular plant environment.

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