A few weeks ago, I blogged about a special traveling educational event, the Realigning America Tour, which is still underway. The event, co-sponsored by Lovejoy Inc. and VibrAlign Inc., features seminars on coupling and alignment issues to help maintenance professionals solve their alignment and coupling issues.
But more importantly, this news brought to my attention VibrAlign’s blog site, The Alignment Blog, which offers some good information and advice on selecting and designing with couplings. Although some would call couplings commodities, it is critical to know what to specify when you’re designing a coupling into a system, and even more important to safely and properly install and maintain them.
The blog posts are authored by five members of the VibrAlign staff, who have more than 100 years combined experience in vibration analysis and alignment. Although the site focuses on a variety of technologies, a specific drop-down on couplings highlights important topics, such as balancing your couplings, coupling or shaft runout, minimizing backlash, and more. Topics are written on a variety of styles of couplings, including fluid couplings, flexible couplings, and more.
The basics offered here are invaluable and difficult to find most anywhere. For example, in one post, the author talks about minimizing backlash. As he says, “Looseness from coupling backlash, if not controlled, will have a negative effect on measurement quality by increasing measurement error and the amount of time it takes to do a precision shaft alignment.” With a few short sentences and visual, he tells you how to eliminate or lessen this backlash.
Besides tutorials, the authors use real-life examples to get their point across. These application stories come with a problem and how proper alignment helped users get the repeatability, proper measurements, and more they required.
VibrAlign is in the business of solving alignment problems. Sometimes you think the answer to your questions can only be found through a manufacturer, but as a supplier of alignment equipment and alignment processes, VibrAlign has positioned themselves as experts on this topic. This site is worthy of repeat visits from anyone who has to use couplings. I know I’ll keep reading it.