Capital Equipment News October 2017

PROFILE

KEY TALKING POINTS

WearCheck flag flies over 15 laboratories on the African continent

transformer health through regular assess- ment of insulating fluid and diagnosis of results. This includes a range of fluid and non-fluid tests, such as insulation paper quality testing. MS: How big is your footprint on the continent to be able to service your customers across these portfolios ? NR: The WearCheck flag flies over 15 laboratories on the African continent, all of which are strategically placed to service industry clusters such as large mining zones. The laboratories are spread out as follows: Johannesburg (2), Cape Town, Durban (2), Middelburg and across South Africa’s borders in Zambia (Lumwana and Kitwe), Zimbabwe, DRC, Namibia, Mozambique and Ghana, as well as additional laboratories further afield in Dubai and India. MS: Which industries represent your key customer base at present? NR: The mining/earthmoving sector is our largest customer base, followed closely by electrical/power generation, as well as industrial, transport, shipping and aviation. MS: Just how crucial is condition monitoring? NR: We continuously have cases where potential machinery failure is detected early through condition monitoring, and corrective action is taken to remove the faulty part and either repair or replace it. The importance of forewarning about potential mechanical failure cannot be stressed enough. The old adage “forewarned is fore-armed” springs to mind – if you know that a component is about to fail, you can then avoid the extremely costly unplanned downtime when it would have actually failed. In this way, condition

Neil Robinson, MD of Wearcheck, reiterates that forewarning about potential mechanical failures is very important.

TIME IS MONEY

In today’s operating environment, any unnecessary equipment downtime is money down the drain, but condition monitoring can actually save the day as it allows service personnel to anticipate a potential failure and take action accordingly. Neil Robinson, MD of Wearcheck Africa, believes ‘time is money’, and the importance of forewarning about potential mechanical failure cannot be stressed enough, reiterating that it is better to be down for a short time to replace a worn part than to have a failure that requires an unknown amount of downtime. By Munesu Shoko

an oil analysis laboratory. Today we offer analysis of all fuel/ industrial fluid samples, including oils, diesel, coolants, greases and lubricants. In addition, our reliability ser- vices division offers monitoring techniques which include vibration analysis, thermal imaging, balancing and laser alignment. Our transformer services division promotes

Munesu Shoko (MS): WearCheck is a leading name in the oil condition monitoring space in Africa. Just give me a brief rundown of your service portfolio. Neil Robinson (NR): WearCheck has evolved into a “one-stop-shop” for all con- dition monitoring needs across a range of industries, after beginning 40 years ago as

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