Vibration analysis graphs and charts are excellent ways to describe the health of a machine or structure. However, to the untrained eye, it’s often difficult to digest what this data actually means, and even more so to convey this information to a machinery operator, maintenance superintendent, vessel owner, or yacht management company. This communication gap has been made much smaller with the advent of motion amplification – A new high speed video camera technology. Industrial and maritime machinery operators and decision-makers can now visibly see machinery or structural issues with the naked eye.
Created in a lab at the University of Louisville, RDI Technologies invented and developed the very first Motion Amplification technology. The Iris M motion amplification system hit the market in 2016 – a new way to see motion, and detect vibration, was born in the predictive maintenance world.
So how exactly does this work? The Iris M technology measures deflection, displacement, movement, and vibration not visible to the human eye. Through videography and software algorithms, the camera extracts meaningful data by detecting changes in light intensity of each pixel, which is translated to vibration/movement data with high levels of accuracy. The software takes this data and amplifies motion in the video, allowing maintenance professionals to physically see the problem. Very cool stuff!
One of AME’s core values is to constantly be on the cutting edge of condition monitoring and predictive maintenance technologies, so naturally, we had to get our hands on the new motion amplification technology.
We’re glad we did, because in April 2020, we had the opportunity to use our newly acquired Iris M to detect complex coupling wear and excessive vibration on a major fishing vessel in Alaska. Every maintenance contractor that attended the vessel before AME was unable to detect the root cause of problems they were experiencing. Motion Amplification provided a physical way to see vibration and movement of the diesel engine, under operation, which exposed the drive end engine brackets as the source of structural looseness (see video here – https://youtu.be/S4T0XU_lfRs ). As a solution, AME engineered and fabricated new mounting brackets, and as you can see in the video, the vibration and movement greatly improved.
Advanced Mechanical Enterprises / AME is based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. We are the vibration and alignment specialists. Contact us to book your RDI Motion Amplification survey today!