Air leaks can cause serious damage to your assets when they go undetected. Some plant managers are tackling the problem with a new approach: integrating Fluke’s ii910 precision acoustic imager with eMaint CMMS software. The result? Insights and analysis making it easy to address leaks before they become a major problem.
Over time, even seemingly minor leaks cause major issues. Air leaks can create enough condensation to destroy an electrical system. They can impact the performance of pneumatic tools or lead to a buildup of foreign particles. Leaks can also cause serious safety issues, like electrical surges, or contamination in silos and reservoirs.
Unfortunately, conventional methods for finding leaks – like the old-fashioned soap bubble technique – are time-consuming and don’t always work effectively unless they are conducted by highly specialized and experienced professionals. The old approaches often mean shutting down the whole plant while the maintenance team checks every asset for leaks.
The introduction of the Fluke ii910 Industrial Acoustic Imager has been revolutionary for any plant that uses air compressors, pneumatic tools, or vacuum systems. The ii910 uses precision acoustic imaging technology to accurately identify even the smallest air leaks, as well as gas leaks, vacuum leaks, and partial discharge. It is a highly accurate and reliable tool that is easy to use, even for those who lack a technical background. The tool is even more effective when integrated with eMaint CMMS.
What Are the Benefits of Integrating the ii910 with a CMMS?
Connecting the Fluke ii910 with eMaint CMMS allows plants to make the most of the new technology, and paves the way for a more efficient, cost-effective approach to decreasing downtime and keeping assets up and running.
Connecting the acoustic imager with CMMS yields the following benefits:
- Reduces waste by ensuring that air leaks are identified early on
- Increases machine uptime by resolving problems before they become catastrophic
- Drives smart decisions by delivering a cost analysis for each leak
- Improves sustainability by making assets run more efficiently
- Standardizes asset management, work order creation, and tracking
How Does the Fluke ii910 Connect to eMaint CMMS?
eMaint CMMS takes the data collected by the ii910 and puts it to work so that plant managers can easily create a standardized system for identifying and resolving leaks that may occur.
The Fluke ii910 produces an air leak report with a detailed description of the leaks found in every asset on the factory floor. This report is valuable on its own, but eMaint CMMS takes it a few steps further by integrating the ii910 data with related maintenance data and applying analytics to the data.
Some Fluke ii910 users have used eMaint to build an air leak dashboard so that managers can access their leak reports on the same platform they already use to track work orders and schedules.
The dashboard contains details on each leak, including the asset description and leak location. There is space for images of the leaks and a field explaining whether repairs have already been scheduled. The dashboard also has a field for additional comments so that maintenance teams can all be on the same page.
How Does the Fluke ii910 Acoustic Imager Work?
The ii910 is an acoustic imaging tool used for detecting air leaks, gas leaks, and vacuum leaks, as well as partial discharge.
The tool uses tiny microphones to capture high frequency sounds that could indicate a turbulence swell leading to a leak. The highly sensitive microphones pick up on sounds out of the range of human hearing. They are accurate even in noisy environments, like the typical factory floor. Because they are built to register high-frequency emissions, they filter out background sounds.
Simply put, the ii910 can “hear” leaks at the earliest stages, long before they grow into serious problems.
The ii910 then uses patented Sound Sight technology to translate the sounds into a visual map of the leaks on the factory floor. Sound Sight color codes the leaks according to their severity. This means that technicians can tell at a glance where the most serious leaks are.
Benefits of Using the Fluke ii910 with eMaint
Fluke’s ii910 acoustic imaging tool has a number of built-in advantages for eMaint users. Here are a few of the major benefits of integrating the tool with your CMMS.
1. Improve Maintenance Task Scheduling to Reduce Costs and Downtime
Centralizing air leak and other maintenance data from the ii910 in eMaint means that managers can make smart, prompt decisions about upcoming repairs. The platform already keeps track of maintenance teams’ schedules, as well as work orders and upcoming maintenance activities.
Users can leverage this data to combine maintenance activities wherever possible. If a team detects a small leak on a particular asset, they can schedule the maintenance for a time when the asset was already due to be serviced. That means the maintenance crew only needs to come in once to handle all the necessary repairs. The result? Lower maintenance costs and less downtime for each asset.
2. Understand the Costs of Leaks
Users appreciate that the air leak dashboard also analyzes the cost of each untreated leak. That number appears next to each leak description, so that managers can make smart, data-driven decisions about how quickly to perform maintenance costs.
Many plants are already accustomed to using eMaint as a central location for their maintenance work orders and budgeting data. Building out an additional air leak dashboard extends eMaint’s capabilities and allows teams to compare the cost of untreated leaks against the cost of performing maintenance.
The dashboard also automatically tallies to cumulative cost of all the leaks in the plant. It’s easy to see, at a glance, what leaks are costing your business. It’s also easy to assess the value of a tool like the Fluke ii910 when measuring the cost of the tool against the savings generated by leak detection.
3. Intuitive and Easy to Learn
The ii910 looks very similar to a large smartphone and is straightforward to operate. The tool has a 7-inch long touchscreen interface. Technicians simply pick it up, turn it on, a point it at the asset being monitored.
The tool automatically creates a map of all the leaks in the area.
The ease of use means that even technicians without a background in ultrasound or acoustic imaging are able to operate the tool successfully.
4. No Need for Downtime During Testing
Traditional leak detection is a complex process. In most cases, it requires plants to shut down for extended periods while maintenance crews carry out tests on every asset.
The Fluke ii910 does not require shutting down machinery. It delivers accurate, reliable leak detection even while assets are up and running.
That means no more costly shutdown or scheduling headaches.
It also means that leak detection is easier than ever. The tool effectively removes barriers to performing leak detection, making it likelier that maintenance teams will carry out the necessary inspections on a regular basis.
eMaint and the Fluke ii910: Connect Acoustic Inspections to Maintenance Work
Maintenance teams work more effectively when everyone has access to the information they need.
The Fluke ii910 excels at data collection, rapidly gathering information about every leak on the factory floor. When that capability is combined with eMaint, every member of the team has valuable data at their fingertips.
Plant managers can analyze leak data and then schedule maintenance tasks, all on the same platform. eMaint makes it easy to assign repairs to the right workers. The software tracks maintenance teams’ schedules, ongoing repairs, and planned shutdowns so that managers have all the information they need to schedule new repairs at the most convenient time.
Managers can even use eMaint’s analytical capabilities to compare data across plants and identify patterns.
Ultimately, the result is more data, greater insights, and more ease throughout the maintenance process. All of which leads to greater productivity and increased efficiency.