Pure Prime Solutions

Pure Prime Solutions Nondestructive Testing Services:

• Ultrasonic testing
• Magnetic particle testing
• Liquid penetrant testing
• Radiographic testing
• Thermal Infrared Testing
• Electromagnetic Testing

Experienced Staff:

• PPS’s engineering and design experience provides technical services from concept through the end of life for all your engineering needs.

Holistic Approach:

• PPS understands design and cost constraints. Engagements are structured based on what works best for the client, ensuring the successful completion of client projects without budget overruns.

Flexible Engagement:

• The PPS partnership approach is to function as an extension of your team. PPS is a force multiplier when combined with client collaboration, bringing creative ideas to life.

Collaborative Approach:

• PPS’s team has decades of engineering and design experience partnering with clients in many different industries.

The Predictive Maintenance System analyzes the collected data to predict future machine performance and provides forecasting using preventive maintenance statistics, reducing an unscheduled shutdown of facility operations.

Over time, eliminating failure modes improves preventive maintenance statistics resulting in cost reduction and increased equipment throughput. Predictive Maintenance and Condition Monitoring systems optimize equipment performance and are an investment in operational productivity, leading to several predictive maintenance advantages, including:

• Optimized equipment reliability
• Increased component operational life and availability
• Preemptive corrective actions
• Minimized unscheduled downtime
• Decreased costs for parts and labor
• Improved Safety
• Increased Morale
• Minimized energy and Power Consumption
• Reduced collateral damage to other equipment
• Optimized equipment reliability
• Reliable product quality

Predictive Maintenance and Condition Monitoring is the process of observing the operation of equipment. Continuous monitoring systems watch equipment to prevent catastrophic failure during operations. However, when the condition monitoring system acts, the equipment fails, requiring an appropriate response.

Typically, the action of the condition monitoring system prevents additional failures.  On its own, the system does not provide any further indication or analysis of the equipment, nevertheless, to predict when or where the next failure will occur. Unknown equipment failure puts maintenance departments in a scramble to order replacement parts, schedule the personnel to make the repairs, or they could prevent the failure from occurring in the first place.

Unexpected equipment downtime is costly and leads to a reactive maintenance process to recover the equipment operations quickly. The purpose of predictive maintenance is the ability to predict future equipment failure. The ability to predict the likelihood of future failure is invaluable. However, understanding the root cause is required to prevent equipment failure, and having reliable data to analyze leads to determining the root cause. Today’s environment of made-to-order components and manufacturers spread out worldwide. This results in a lead time issue.

RESULTS OF PREDICTIVE MAINTENANCE AND CONDITION MONITORING SYSTEMS

Utilizing PPS predictive maintenance tools to identify the root cause of breakdowns using functional failure analysis (FMEA and FTA) results in the data needed to reduce unscheduled downtime. Providing a baseline to determine the best corrective maintenance action and, if appropriate, applying simulation capability to validate and optimize the solution. Predictive maintenance and Condition Monitoring systems work together to ensure the current and future optimal use of equipment.

HOW DOES IT WORK

PPS nondestructive testing, Condition Monitoring, and Predictive Maintenance System quantify plant equipment condition during regular operation, identifying current maintenance issues. Condition Monitoring System utilizes real-time sensor measurements and stops the equipment, preventing additional damage when appropriate. The system notifies maintenance personnel when it determines there is an ongoing issue that needs maintenance support.

The Predictive Maintenance System analyzes the collected data to predict future machine performance and provides forecasting using preventive maintenance statistics, reducing an unscheduled shutdown of facility operations.

Over time, eliminating failure modes improves preventive maintenance statistics resulting in cost reduction and increased equipment throughput. Predictive Maintenance and Condition Monitoring systems optimize equipment performance and are an investment in operational productivity, leading to several predictive maintenance advantages, including:

• Optimized equipment reliability
• Increased component operational life and availability
• Preemptive corrective actions
• Minimized unscheduled downtime
• Decreased costs for parts and labor
• Improved Safety
• Increased Morale
• Minimized energy and Power Consumption
• Reduced collateral damage to other equipment
• Optimized equipment reliability
• Reliable product quality

At Pure Prime Solutions (PPS), we develop client-specific equipment and testing processes. Typically, performance and reliability testing is performed in-house and occasionally outsourced to an independent consultant. Conventional wisdom leads most to believe that you want to conduct product testing in-house. Yet, that is not always the case — most importantly, because of the cost.

Maintaining testing equipment is expensive. It requires dedicated space, equipment, upgrades, labor, and, most importantly, training. Typically, during product development, testing is performed to validate that the design meets performance, durability, and reliability requirements. 

Above all, the best reason for outsourcing product testing is adding added engineering experience when you need it the most. Product testing is a manufacturer’s last opportunity to find and resolve weaknesses in the product design. PPS doesn’t typically just run your Test and provide you with some data to figure it out on your own. PPS partners with our clients to ensure that it adds value to the product before we perform any testing. Delivering this value requires a deep understanding of the true objective of the Test to determine what is the lifetime performance, durability, and reliability of the product.

PERFORMANCE TESTING

Performance is usually the easiest to understand and test. Why? All products are intended to perform a task or function that adds value to its consumers. Added value is gained from increasing productivity which decreases production cost per unit. The amount of value added is determined compared to the current or required cost of that task. However, a product’s performance doesn’t reside in a vacuum. The dependability and reliability of the product must meet its expected operational life. In short, cost-effective product design requires balancing performance with durability, reliability, and product lifetime total cost. Cost-effective designs require performance, durability, and reliability testing.

DURABILITY AND RELIABILITY TESTING

Durability and Reliability Testing measures a product’s performance and endurance over long periods of time, operating in its intended environment. To understand the reliability of a product during its lifetime, we need to graph the failure rate over time, creating the bathtub curve. The bathtub curve gets its name from the shape of the graph. The beginning and the end of a product’s lifetime are where the highest rate of failure occurs.

The bathtub curve shows that the failure rate during the early “infant mortality” of a product decreases with time. Infant mortality is typically the first concern of any manufacturer, and this often leads to over-designing the product and pushing the product cost higher. Fortunately, these types of failures occur early in the testing process. Infant mortality provides the opportunity to resolve the issue and remove the failure mode quickly. Infant mortality results in the development model failing fast and often.   

After the infant mortality phase of a product’s life, product failures occur randomly. In our experience, these random failers arise because of the manufacturing process and environmental variation or abuse. Finally, due to wear-out, product failures begin at the end of life. Additionally, there is a need to perform durability and reliability testing for a few reasons:

• To examine a product’s endurance. (e., How long will it last?)
• To determine the failure rates of the product. (MTBF)
• To determine preventative measures that can increase the product’s reliability and lifespan. (What broke when and how do I fix it?)
• Validate a product design for service. (The design meets the client’s expectations)  

For any product to have value, the mean time between failures (MTBF) needs to match the product’s expected total cost. For example, PPS designs its products to last twenty (20) years without significant repair. That translates into the MTBF being forty (40) years. Why? Because MTBF means that at the twenty (20) year mark, fifty per cent (50%) of your produced products have failed beyond repair due to wear-out

PPS performs Highly Accelerated Life Testing (HALT) and Highly Accelerated Stress Test (HAST). These tests are designed for the environment and expected use of the product during its lifecycle. HALT and HAST are completed in months, without waiting for the life of the product. The Reliability test examines five primary areas:

• Stress/Stain
• Vibration and Noise
• Temperature and Humidity
• Time Duration
• Number of Test Cycles
• Test Duration

Well-designed and manufactured products minimize unforeseen disruptions in performance throughout their life. Thorough testing exposes these unexpected disruptions and the root cause condition in which they occur.