Preventative Maintenance: A necessity in today's manufacturing world

Preventive maintenance is proving to be an overwhelming need for most manufacturing companies in today’s industrial world. Having a plan or dedicated team member focused on machine and machine tool maintenance can save companies tens of thousands of dollars per year and potentially months of production. Workholding on machines, like Magna-Lock USA products, is just one example of a product that should have a plan in place from year to year to optimize machine output and performance.

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Collector rings are one of the most common replaceable spare parts for workholding products

Let’s dive deeper into preventive maintenance in workholding.

What is preventative maintenance?

A somewhat self-explanatory term, preventative maintenance is a plan that is put in place within a company to determine when a machine will need new spare parts and service. The main purpose of preventive maintenance is to reduce downtime due to repairs and prolong the life of the machine or item in question. Maintenance can help prevent companies from having to replace equipment, which can result in significant cost savings. Machinery should be manufactured to last decades, but only when a preventative maintenance schedule helps the machine last that long.

According to ServiceMax, 82% of companies experienced unplanned downtime within the past 3 years. Preventative maintenance helps keep those unplanned downtimes to a minimum.

How do factors outside of the machinery itself affect maintenance?

As the manufacturing industry has seen in recent years, machining has experienced a general increase in lead times across the board. If preventative maintenance schedules are created and planned for, a spare part or part of the machine breaking or wearing down doesn’t need to mean long downtime due to machining new parts for the machine. Stocking spare parts on shelves is key to this factor, or, at a minimum, ordering multiple parts at the same time. A few thousand dollars in stocking spare parts could mean tens of thousands of dollars in savings on lost time on the machine if those parts were not on the shelves.

How does preventive maintenance apply to workholding?

As with most industrial products, workholding products have wearable parts that need to be replaced from time to time. Both magnetic and non-magnetic workholding require maintenance. See below for recommendations on stocking spare parts for both types of workholding offered by Magna-Lock USA.

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Obsidian Manufacturing Industries, Inc. is a Rockford, IL, manufacturing company and is the OEM for Magna-Lock USA workholding, MagnaLift & Power-Grip lift magnets, and Arter Precision Grinding Machines, as well as providing surface grinding services. They are located at 5015 28th Ave. in Rockford, IL, with a phone number of 815-962-8700. Check out more at obsidianmfg.com/brands