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eNerGY-TECH.com December 2009
FeATUreS
When an HVAC technician is called out to perform
a shaft alignment on a cooling tower fan, it is always an
adventure, and seldom a pleasant one. Numerous challeng-
es are involved, not the least of which include the distance
to be spanned, vibration from surrounding fans, hazardous
wet conditions, and obstructions, both to line of sight as
well as mobility. Using dial indicators in the face-face-
distance method, the job might take many hours, and
much longer if soft foot is found and must be corrected.
The following application in a large hospital is illustra-
tive of a number of frequently encountered problems that
must be overcome, and how they were handled with a laser
alignment system.
The cooling tower in question has a 12 Marley fan
whose gearbox is coupled to a Baldor 40 H.P. 1775 rpm
motor via a 60 jackshaft with single flex plane couplings
at each end. The fan enclosure consists of a fiberglass shell
constructed around a wooden framework, located outside.
The alignment could not be measured by shooting the laser
beam across both couplings simultane-
ously, since the jackshaft went through
a small aperture in the fiberglass shell
whose diameter was less than the cou-
plings O.D. This meant that the two-
step procedure would have to be used
to take alignment readings (just as with
indicators), whereby each coupling is
bridged across individually, as illustrated
in Figure 1. The results of the readings
from these individual setups are then
combined to obtain the actual position
of the machine to be moved, in this case
the motor.
To simplify the task, a Rotalign Ultra
laser alignment system was used. This
permitted the cooling tower drive train
to be configured as a three-machine
train, with the middle machine config-
ured as a shaft, to represent the jack-
shaft. (See Figure 3.)
Configuring this particular setup
makes it easy to take readings across the
two couplings individually; the instru-
ment then instantly calculates the neces-
sary corrections for the motor without
any need to manually combine results
from the two setups.
A cooling tower adventure in alignment
By Alan Luedeking
Figure 1. Single-shot setup without obstruction.
Figure 2. Cooling Tower Fan.
December 2009 eNerGY-TECH.com
n
11
The first signifi-
cant problem arose
when the Rotalign
Ultra revealed that
in order to align the
shafts, the motor
would have to be
lowered by 149.8
mils at the front
feet and 225.5
mils at the back
feet. There were
not enough shims
available under the
back feet of the
motor that could be
removed to allow
this correction to be
made! See Figure
4. This is the clas-
sic scenario where
a machine is said to
be base-bound.
Since re-machining the feet or the baseplate was out of
the question, both resource- and time-wise, an alternative
solution had to be found. This brought into play another
powerful feature of the Rotalign Ultra:
the ability to set specific pairs of feet as
stationary for purposes of performing
alignment corrections. The instrument
was told to make the back feet of the
motor stationary (since they could not
be lowered) and to make the front feet
of the gearbox movable. The tool then
instantly calculated an alternative solu-
tion (see Figure 5).
As can be seen, both the front feet
of the gearbox (on the left) and front
feet of the motor would now have to
be shimmed up by 24.2 mils and 36.9
mils respectively. The great advantage
of this solution is that it requires only
positive shimming to be done (which is
always easier than negative shimming!),
while minimizing the magnitude of the
necessary corrections. This solution is
traditionally called making an optimal
move.
After the shimming corrections were
performed, the Rotalign Ultra was recon-
figured to make all the motor feet mov-
able again, and new readings were taken
to determine the final horizontal adjust-
ment to be made. The horizontal move
would be monitored in real time with the
laser system, which
can eliminate the
need to stick indica-
tors against the feet
of the motor.
Now another
circumstance par-
ticular in many
cooling towers
came into play
the laser could not
be mounted on the
stationary gearbox
shaft to monitor the
horizontal move
since the fan enclo-
sure blocked line
of sight between
the gearbox shaft
and the motor
shaft. Therefore, a
different arrange-
ment would have to
be used. Since the Rotalign Ultra laser serves only as a
stationary reference line when monitoring moves, the laser
can be attached to any fixed point, and does not have to be
FeATUreS
Figure 3. Two-step overview.
Figure 4. Basebound.
Tilt Pad Thrust Bearing
Renewal Parts Maintenance
4485 Glenbrook Road Willoughby, OH 44094
Fhooe. 800-44-411 www.8eoewaIFarts.co
Renewal Parts Maintenance
Material pgraJes
esiga
ptimizatiaa
FreJictahle 3kim
3iziag Teckaiqaes
Ferlarmaace
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Figure 5. Optimal.
Figure 6. Laser move setup.
12
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eNerGY-TECH.com December 2009
mounted on the sta-
tionary machines
shaft. This meant
that the laser could
be attached to a
fixed location on
the motor side of
the fan enclosure.
In this case, a steel
angle-iron attached
to the wooden brac-
ing on the outside of
the fiberglass fan enclosure (on the motor side), provided
an ideal mounting location. The laser was mounted to this
angle iron using magnetic brackets. See an illustration of
this in Figure 6. With this convenient solution, no dial
indicators would need to be mounted against the feet of
the motor to control the motors move, and furthermore,
this laser setup also permits checking for soft foot on the
motor. The soft foot check and corrections were performed
after the rough alignment but prior to the final alignment.
The final alignment ended up well within tolerance, as
shown in the final result screen in Figure 7.
The entire job, including checking for and correcting
soft foot took less than three hours, most of which was
spent climbing up and down ladders and clambering care-
fully around the cooling tower structure. This resulted in
greatly reduced downtime and labor savings for the plant
operator.
Alan Luedeking is a training instructor and field service
engineer for rotating machinery alignment at Ludeca Inc.
Luedeking has a bachelors degree from the University of
Colorado and has 27 years field experience with all types of
machinery in a wide range of industries, including breweries,
mines, power plants, paper mills, chemical plants, oil refiner-
ies, food processing plants, shipyards and others. He holds an
ISO Level I certification in vibration analysis and is manager
of Alignment Tech Support and Training for Ludeca.
regarding spacer shaft tolerances
The machine train in question is a cooling tower
fan drive with just two machines (a motor and a
right-angle gearbox) directly coupled through a long
jackshaft, and not a three-machine train, as was set
up in the Rotalign Ultra. Thus, the aligner must either
manually apply spacer shaft tolerances to the mea-
sured alignment condition at each coupling, or tell the
Rotalign Ultra to do it for him or her. It is imperative
to do this, since the application of short coupling toler-
ances, at each coupling or elsewhere along the length
of the spacer shaft, is a self-defeating exercise since
such a result might not be attainable and also leads
to unnecessary work. For a thorough understanding of
why this is so, we refer the reader to an in-depth pre-
sentation on Short Flex and Spacer Shaft Tolerances
(Parts 1 and 2) on the Reliability Web, accessible
through a link under Learning Center on Ludecas
Web site, www.ludeca.com/res_learningcenter.php.
Since we have set up single-plane couplings at
each end of the spacer, the Rotalign Ultra will by
default apply the correct short coupling tolerances
for this type of coupling. You dont want that. Instead,
observe the angu-
larity results given
for each coupling
(see Figure 5,
which illustrates the
results for the motor
coupling on the
right) and simply
apply the correct
spacer coupling
angularity toler-
ances (see Figure
8) for the rpm
involved, and com-
pare these values
to the results.
In this case,
at 1,775 rpm,
you would apply
the tolerances for
1,800 rpm, which
dictate an excellent
value of 0.6 mils per inch. If your measured values
for angularity at each coupling are within this permis-
sible tolerance, the job is finished. Alternatively, the
Rotalign Ultra can do this for you automatically, but
you must first input the desired tolerance values via the
Maximum Values feature that lets you, the user, manu-
ally specify exactly which tolerances to apply at each
coupling in the train on a case-by-case basis, instead
of automatically applying standard industry tolerances
from the tables (see Figures 9 and 10.)
EnErgyTALK
Figure 8. Spacer tolerances.
Figure 7. Final results.
Figure 9. MaxVals Option.
Figure 10. MaxVals.