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Top 10 Preventative Maintenance Tips for Reducing Downtime

Preventative maintenance is hugely important and should be part of any obsolescence plan yet, surprisingly, not everyone uses it to their advantage. Read on for our top tips on reducing your downtime.

  1. Prevent overheating by ensuring cooling fans are free from dirt and rotate freely on your drives, PLCs and cabinets
  2. Check the status of backup batteries in your PLCs and replace them every six months
  3. Backup! Backup! Backup! We all know to backup important files on our PCs, so why wouldn’t you keep a copy of important drive parameters and PLC programs? Keeping a backup makes it much easier to get back up and running in the event of a part failure
  4. Don’t let intermittent faults lead to major faults. Ensure the power is off and remove covers to inspect components for damage. Components like capacitors dry out with age, sending them to Northern Industrial for a full service can prevent major faults
  5. Similarly, sort out annoying faults before they worsen. Little things like a HMI taking longer and longer to come on may not seem like a big deal, but it is another sign of component failure which can be stopped
  6. Have you got a spares plan in place? This is especially important for plant critical parts and obsolete parts. Often downtime costs more than the spare so it only makes sense to have critical ones in your own stock
  7. Check your motors. Overheating or failure can be caused by both over and under lubrication. Also keep an eye on bearings as this is the most common cause of motor failure
  8. Are your connections tight? Inspect all connections, terminals and cables
  9. Check fuses for proper rating and discolouration. Verify tightness with the fuse holder
  10. Whilst not really preventative, ensuring your wiring matches the wiring diagrams can save you time and hassle in a breakdown situation.