(upbeat music)
- My name's Stan Riddle.
I'm the Technical Training Supervisor for Acoem USA,
and I've been doing precision alignment of machinery
for about 42 years.
- My name's Eric McKeefer.
I've done shaft alignment just a handful of times.
Today, I'm using the AT-100.
It is a laser shaft alignment system
that pairs with the horizontal shaft alignment app.
- This little contest we're gonna do,
just to be honest and upright and straightforward
with everybody,
I roughed in alignment on both of these machines
and they are, as far as I could tell,
with a straight edge,
the same.
A rough demand vertically and horizontally,
we minimize the soft foot,
we tighten the bolts down in a controlled,
repeatable pattern.
Same thing we always do
in our alignment training classes we teach.
So these two alignment demonstrators
should be just about exact clones of each other.
So the only variable is gonna be
if the old grizzled guy with the dial indicators
can do this as quickly as the young man using the AT-100.
(bright music)
(numbers beeping)
- Laser heads are connected.
- And I'm mounting up my brackets.
You know, one of the challenges, I guess,
with shaft alignment, using dial indicators,
is it does take a little time
to get indicator brackets together,
get good travel on 'em and all those things.
So that it is one of the drawbacks,
but they're still very accurate measuring tools.
So we'll see how it goes.
- Okay, I got my angle set,
(music intensifies)
taking in dimensions,
taking first measurement,
(dramatic music)
second measurement.
- While he's taking measurements,
I have to keep up with direction
of rotation of these indicators,
to make sure they're going positive or negative.
Make sure they don't roll around to the midpoint.
And I think it's positive, but it's really negative.
So it is a little bit slower.
And now that I've taken my three measurements,
I have to calculate the 6 o'clock measurement,
using a validity rule.
- Grabbing my shims
for a vertical adjustment.
- I have just set my indicators at half travel,
so these are really gonna be measuring live as well.
So I can calculate the shim values pretty much in my head
or I could graph it out.
(suspenseful music)
They should be fairly close vertical,
so I'm gonna roll around to horizontal,
and I can use the jacking bolts
to make this final correction, hopefully.
First correction complete,
remeasure.
Now that would work...
- Second measurement.
- And my challenge is,
is when I move one set of jacking bolts,
it changes all the indicator numbers.
So I have to kinda sneak up on it,
do a little at a time to make sure I don't overshoot,
and make it worse instead of better.
- [Eric] Vertical is still slightly half.
- Now I'm starting to remember why I like lasers.
I still got some movement somewhere,
I'll have to do this again.
Oh, let me check that one more time.
Don't get too fancy,
make an old man look lame.
- I'm doing my hopefully final measurement now.
- Make some new circles, make that a large.
Minus 16 for this,
get back over here.
(intense music)
- All green,
done.
(cool music)
- I'm as good with dials as anybody.
I don't claim to be the best,
but I'm as good as anybody I know.
We're using dial indicators to do shaft alignment.
And I did a good alignment.
I'm staying on zeros all the way around in 49 minutes.
Not bad if you use dial indicators for shaft alignment,
using reverse dial indicator process.
You gotta admit to yourself that's pretty good
most of the time.
Eric, however, using a much better tool,
more accurate tool, faster tool, easier tool to use,
knocked out a good alignment in 16 minutes.
- Yeah, compared to other shaft alignment tools I've used,
I felt this one was really accessible
for someone who didn't have experience.
Using the AT-100 was pretty simple and easy.
I caught a snag after my first measurement and adjustments,
but then the app told me exactly what I needed to do.
Just change out a couple of the shims.
I think maybe when tightening down
I had over-tightened or something.
And after redoing that measurement
with the new shims in there,
and even double checking after that, I got all green checks.
- So it's kinda like I'm driving a '62 Plymouth
and he's driving a Lamborghini.
It really doesn't compare.
It is not apples to apples, but it does show you this.
Eric, with little to no shaft alignment experience,
but using a far superior tool,
is much faster, much more accurate, much more repeatable,
and doesn't have to run into the same problems I do,
taking analog measurements with an indicator,
as opposed to taking pretty high-tech,
precise digital measurements,
with the AT-100.
(laughing)
Good job.
(cool music)