The development of an integrated vibration monitoring and analysis system

A mill-wide, integrated vibration monitoring and analysis system for application to single and multi-stand mills and roll grinding machines, has been developed. Data-acquisition systems measure and analyse vibration occurring when grinding and rolling, and store roll and coil vibration histories to a central database. As well as providing immediate early warning to operators, warnings are also issued to operators of downstream processes when rolls or coils have suffered high levels of vibration during processing. The database can be queried to help trace the sources of strip marking. In a further development, bearing and gear vibration will be tracked and trended on a coil-by-coil basis so that developing faults can be identified. To date, fully-networked systems have been successfully installed in two cold mills, and stand-alone systems are operating in a number of other mills and roll shops.