June 2019

57 www.drivesncontrols.com June 2019 GAMBICA SUPPLEMENT n MAINTAINING CLIMATE CONTROLS IS NO FALSE ECONOMY... IT’S THE KEY TO EFFICIENCY £ 480,000… is a lot of money! But that is what it costs one of the UK’s largest automotive manufacturers per hour when they experience downtime on their paint plant. Your overheads may not be as substantial, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that the old adage is true – time is money. Regardless of your industry, production downtime is a crucial statistic to monitor because of the direct impact it can have on your bottom line. Downtime equals increased spares/maintenance costs, taken directly from your profit, which could have been invested to meet more pertinent business objectives, purchasing new machinery and so on. When I talk to customers regarding their attitude towards climate control maintenance, this tends to fall by the wayside, and there seem to be some key drivers for this thought process: “I will just fix a problem when it occurs…” In the past, reactive maintenance was seen as acceptable for most businesses. However times have changed. Operational objectives are now becoming “increased throughput”, “cost efficiency” and “continuous improvement”. Potential roadblocks to output targets need to be nipped in the bud and nobody wants to be the one in the meeting explaining why targets were not met! The implementation of a semi-regular maintenance schedule doesn’t have to be time-consuming. Even something as simple as a weekly visual check of cooling equipment filter mats or system alarms can alert you to call in the experts, who can then perform a more detailed review for you. “My equipment is currently operating and I haven’t serviced it in months/years…” The problem may be “out of sight, out of mind” but the longer your cooling equipment is left unchecked, the higher the risk. If a fan is in a dusty environment and the filter becomes clogged, this will reduce its effectiveness to cool the electrical equipment due to a reduced level of air throughput. This can increase the enclosure’s internal temperature. As a rule of thumb, for every 10°C you increase your internal temperature, you halve the life of the equipment, and increase the likelihood of an unexpected failure. “We just open the enclosure door for a while…” This is treating the symptoms rather than the illness. If you are having to resort to a tactic such as using large fans to blow ambient air into an enclosure, you could be doing more harm than good. Not to mention that this is massively dangerous from a health and safety standpoint. An enclosure’s purpose is to create an environment in which equipment is protected from ambient contaminants. Having the door open allows dirty air to be pulled into the enclosure. This will then gather in switchgear and can cause short-circuits or block on-board fans, which will result in damage to componentry, reduced lives and critical component failures. If this course of action is required, it can point to the fact that the cooling equipment currently used is not adequate for the installation, or it requires some level of maintenance to bring it back into working order. “I don’t have the manpower/we have a company who does that work for us…” Many companies tell me that they outsource their servicing to third parties, however I tend to question what they are checking, given that I have been called onto site because an enclosure is overheating! On one occasion, I asked the customer to speak to their service provider to understand what checks were being undertaken, because their cooling units were in quite a state of disrepair. It became clear after a short discussion that they serviced air-conditioning in the offices and didn’t even look in the factory… Obviously this is not the case for all service providers, however climate control equipment is becoming increasingly efficient, and new cutting- edge technologies are being launched every year. The only guarantee of the highest level of service will come from engineers who have been trained by the manufacturers about the technology. Take the introductory example again and turn the spotlight onto your business. Everyone has budgets and targets to hit, so ask yourself, can you afford not to have correct maintenance in place? n There is a tendency for enclosure users to take the cooling systems in their cabinets for granted, and to devote minimal resources to maintaining these systems. Karl Lycett, Rittal’s product manager for climate control, argues that this could be a costly mistake. Karl Lycett

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