Company News
5 pump maintenance mistakes and how to correct them
APRIL 2019 - Koss Industrial was asked to contribute to an article in the April 2019 edition of Dairy Foods magazine. The article discusses ways dairy processors can reduce downtime due to pump and valve issues. Here are some highlights from the article.
Dairy Foods: In your experience, what are the biggest mistakes/oversights dairy processors make when it comes to pump and/or valve maintenance?
Koss Industrial: In pumps, neglected oil changes are common. We’ve done maintenance where water has completely displaced the oil in gear casings, usually getting in due to high-pressure washdown of breathers or seals.
We’ve also been seeing more and more cases of sanitizer sitting in pump casings and causing corrosion. There are options to avoid this such as water rinsing and casing drains.
Using improper repair components is also an issue, particularly for spacers and shims. We recently saw a pump come in with carbon steel instead of stainless steel shims. They had become swollen and corroded and actually pushed the casing into the rotors causing major damage.
We see many pumps in the field without proper upstream strainers, or worse yet, the housing is installed but the filtering element itself is missing. We’ve seen serious pump damage occur from people dropping nuts, bolts, gaskets, clamps, gloves, etc. into tanks when there is no strainer to prevent these objects from flowing through and jamming up the pump.
And finally, if pumps are not setup to run dry, the system should have sensors and controls in place to shut the pump down if it isn’t pumping fluids properly. Running dry is probably the #2 reason for pump damage after pumping foreign objects through the pump.
Dairy Foods: What are some of the repercussions of these, and how could they be avoided?
Koss Industrial: Don’t direct high-pressure hoses at components that are not designed to handle it. Water may enter the gear casings. Guards can always be added to protect these components.
Proper maintenance with the proper parts is so important. At Koss, we inspect and test pumps to ensure they’re working at optimal efficiency. We can also provide impeller trimming and other services as well as repairs. We have a large inventory of new service parts and also have those hard-to-find parts for older pump and valve models.
And, if something is leaking, it should be repaired as soon as possible. We see instances where valves and pumps have been leaking for months but no one did anything. Then suddenly we get called in because the plant is down due to a catastrophic failure. Don’t ignore the warning signs. It’s much less costly to call us for maintenance and refurbishing than it is for emergencies.
