Sep 16, 2026 · 16 min · 9 segments
On Reliability Radio, **Jonathan Guiney** and **Brendon Russ** talk with **Robert Skerik** of **Technical Associates of Charlotte** about advanced vibration analysis, high-frequency monitoring…
Robert SkerikGuest
Brendon RussHost
Is this, I got to get a whole new sensor box and all this other stuff? What's going on with
It's the same piezoelectric accelerometer, but instead of looking at the lower half of the spectrum or from our previous podcast, the lower half of the radio dial, we're going to look at the upper portion of the spectrum or the upper portion of the radio dial.
And with traditional vibration, You establish a maximum frequency, referred to as an f-max, and everything above the f-max is discarded.
So maybe... 50% of the time, 80% of the time, you'll know that the machine is going to fail, but your plant manager's not very happy with the, 20% you missed.
Well, you could do that, but the F-Max has all those lower frequency, high amplitude signals, and they will drown out in the spectrum what's happening with the bearings, the gears, the lubrication, the cavitations.
Now, I have to keep saying in the spectrum because the spectral technology, the FFT, the fast Fourier transform algorithm, that's part of the problem.
So a bearing can be screaming, and we don't have to worry about the units, but let's just say we're measuring acceleration in Gs.
A bearing could be screaming at 50 Gs, and the spectrum will register it at less than 1 G, and it's because it's not a sine wave.
The spectrum will register it perhaps at less than 1 G, and that's because it's not a sine wave.
So anything that is not sinusoidal, not that roller coaster sine wave, the FFT spectrum will under report its amplitude.
And if you cut the amplitude far enough, then the signals that it can detect are now in the noise.
So tell me a little bit about how we can capture that and actually use that information to make decisions.
Is this, I got to get a whole new sensor box and all this other stuff? What's going on with
It's the same piezoelectric accelerometer, but instead of looking at the lower half of the spectrum or from our previous podcast, the lower half of the radio dial, we're going to look at the upper portion of the spectrum or the upper portion of the radio dial.
And with traditional vibration, You establish a maximum frequency, referred to as an f-max, and everything above the f-max is discarded.
So maybe... 50% of the time, 80% of the time, you'll know that the machine is going to fail, but your plant manager's not very happy with the, 20% you missed.
Well, you could do that, but the F-Max has all those lower frequency, high amplitude signals, and they will drown out in the spectrum what's happening with the bearings, the gears, the lubrication, the cavitations.
Now, I have to keep saying in the spectrum because the spectral technology, the FFT, the fast Fourier transform algorithm, that's part of the problem.
So a bearing can be screaming, and we don't have to worry about the units, but let's just say we're measuring acceleration in Gs.
A bearing could be screaming at 50 Gs, and the spectrum will register it at less than 1 G, and it's because it's not a sine wave.
The spectrum will register it perhaps at less than 1 G, and that's because it's not a sine wave.
So anything that is not sinusoidal, not that roller coaster sine wave, the FFT spectrum will under report its amplitude.
And if you cut the amplitude far enough, then the signals that it can detect are now in the noise.
So tell me a little bit about how we can capture that and actually use that information to make decisions.
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