Improving Preventive Maintenance Management in an Energy Solutions Company

30th International Conference on Flexible Automation and Intelligent Manufacturing (FAIM2021)In industry, production processes and assets are constantly evolving, Thus, continually improving and updating them is essential to their sustainability. This work intended to apply a set of methods and philosophies to improve the Preventive Maintenance Management process in a case study company dedicated to the development, production and maintenance of power and distribution transformers. Thus, a Action – Research methodology was used. After identifying the main problems, a mixed maintenance strategy based on Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) and Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) was applied. The following achievements were obtained by this work: (a) method of grading equipment critically based on its importance to the production process was developed and implemented;(b) a new flowchart of decisions and actions was developed for Preventive Maintenance Plan Management; (c) a reduction of the waste time in Preventive Maintenance (PM) was obtained; (d) the implementation of Autonomous Maintenance (AM) resulted in a reduction of 66% in equipment failures; (e) a set of new Key Performance Indicators (KPI´s) were introduced; (f) maintenance plans compliance rates increased by 12%. At the end of the work a reduction of € 120 060 could be achieved. Thus, the main contribution of this work was to show that bringing to the action different tool together in an organized way and share the information and responsibilities with the workers can result in important savings to the company, becoming the maintenance function more effective.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Cutting Forces Assessment in CNC Machining Processes: A Critical Review

Machining processes remain an unavoidable technique in the production of high-precision parts. Tool behavior is of the utmost importance in machining productivity and costs. Tool performance can be assessed by the roughness left on the machined surfaces, as well as of the forces developed during the process. There are various techniques to determine these cutting forces, such as cutting force prediction or measurement, using dynamometers and other sensor systems. This technique has often been used by numerous researchers in this area. This paper aims to give a review of the different techniques and devices for measuring the forces developed for machining processes, allowing a quick perception of the advantages and limitations of each technique, through the literature research carried out, using recently published worksThe present work was done and funded under the scope of the project ON-SURF (ANI | P2020 | POCI-01-0247-FEDER-024521, co-funded by Portugal 2020 and FEDER, through COMPETE 2020-Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalisation. F.J.G. Silva also thanks INEGI-Instituto de Ciência e Inovação em Engenharia Mecânica e Engenharia Industria, due to its support.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Experimental study on the wear behavior of B4C and TiB2 monolayered PVD coatings under high contact loads

There are several ways to characterize the wear resistance of coatings in the laboratory, almost all of them applying relatively low loads, both punctually and more widely. Pin-on-disc, reciprocal sliding, and micro-abrasion wear tests are quite common configurations for this purpose. Thus, a gap was identified in terms of characterization of hard PVD coatings subject to higher loads. This work aims to study and compare the wear behavior of two different coatings obtained by PVD, both monolayer, B4C (boron carbide) and TiB2 (titanium diboride), focused on identifying the wear mechanisms present in different coatings provided with high hardness. Both coatings were initially characterized in terms of chemical composition, thickness, morphology, structure, hardness, and adhesion to the substrate, being subsequently tested in laboratory equipment for wear tests following the block-on-ring configuration and relatively high loads; with a view to study the failure mechanisms of the coatings and their wear rate, it was found that the main wear mechanism, sustained by the analyzed coatings, was abrasive wear in the contact area. In the craters left by the tests, it was determined that the main wear mechanism was two-body abrasion. The B4C and TiB2 coatings performed well in relation to the load and configuration used, in line with the behavior already observed in other used wear test configurations. However, under the imposed conditions, and comparing the two coatings, TiB2 is the best option when high loads need to be applied to the coated surfaces, as these coatings did not suffer perforation during testing and the amount of removed volume was inferior to that of the B4C coated samples.The authors would like to thanks to Dr. Rui Rocha from CEMUP (Porto, Portugal), due to his active collaboration in getting the best SEM pictures, helping with his critical analysis of some phenomena. Authors also would like to thanks to Prof. Maria José Vaz Marques due to her crucial help in getting and analyzing the XRD spectra, as well as Ing. Ricardo Alexandre due to his extremely important role in proving all the coatings through TEandM company. Prof. Jorge Seabra is also acknowledged due to his support, as well as LAETA/ INEGI/CETRIB due to the financial support provided in this work and in many others.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Wear Behavior and Machining Performance of TiAlSiN-Coated Tools Obtained by dc MS and HiPIMS: A Comparative Study

Duplex stainless steels are being used on applications that require high corrosion resistance and excellent mechanical properties, such as the naval and oil-gas exploration industry. The components employed in these industries are usually obtained by machining; however, these alloys have low machinability when compared to conventional stainless steels, usually requiring the employment of tool coatings. In the present work, a comparative study of TiAlSiN coating performance obtained by these two techniques in the milling of duplex stainless-steel alloy LDX 2101 was carried out. These coatings were obtained by the conventional direct current magnetron sputtering (dc MS) and the novel high power impulse magnetron sputtering (HiPIMS). The coatings were analyzed and characterized, determining mechanical properties for both coatings, registering slightly higher mechanical properties for the HiPIMS-obtained coating. Machining tests were performed with varying cutting length and feed-rate, while maintaining constant values for axial and radial depth of cut and cutting speed. The surface roughness of the material after machining was assessed, as well as the wear sustained by each of the tool types, identifying the wear mechanisms and behavior of these tools, as well as registering the flank wear values presented for each of the tested tools. The HiPIMS-obtained coating exhibited a very similar behavior when compared to the other, producing similar surface roughness quality. However, the HiPIMS coating exhibited less wear for higher cutting lengths, proving to be a better choice in this case, especially regarding tool life

Comparative Study of the Wear Behavior of B4C Monolayered and CrN/CrCN/DLC Multilayered Physical Vapor Deposition Coatings Under High Contact Loads: An Experimental Analysis

There are several ways to characterize the wear resistance of coatings in the laboratory, almost all of them applying relatively low contact pressure, both punctually and over surface contact. Pin-on-disc, reciprocal sliding, and micro-abrasion wear tests are quite common configurations for this purpose. Thus, a gap was identified in terms of characterization of hard physical vapor deposition (PVD) coatings subject to higher levels of contact pressure. This study aims to study and compare the wear behavior of two different coatings made by PVD, a B4C (Boron Carbide) monolayer, less used, and another following a multilayer structure of CrN/CrCN/DLC, to identify the wear mechanisms involved in quite different coatings. Both coatings were initially characterized in terms of chemical composition, thickness, morphology, structure, hardness, and adhesion to the substrate, being subsequently tested in laboratory equipment for wear tests following the block-on-ring configuration and relatively high levels of contact pressure, with a view to study the failure mechanisms of the coatings and their wearrate. CrN/CrCN/DLC multilayered coatings presented a better overall wear behavior, whereas B4C coating showed a good wear behavior regarding the load and configuration used, but in line with the behavior already observed when other wear testing configurations had been used. Thus, under the conditions imposed, CrN/CrCN/DLC coating is the best option when high contact pressure is applied to the coated surfaces.The authors would like to thank Dr. Rui Rocha from CEMUP (Porto, Portugal) for his active collaboration in getting the best SEM pictures and helping with the critical analysis of some phenomena. The authors also would like to thank Professor Maria José Vaz Marques for her crucial help in getting and analyzing the XRD spectra, as well as Ing. Ricardo Alexandre for the extremely important role in proving all the coatings through TEandM company. Professor Jorge Seabra is also acknowledged for to his support as well as LAETA/INEGI/CETRIB for the financial support provided for this study.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio