Optimizing operations with preventive maintenance

Constantino Lannes, president of Stanley, North Carolina-based Sennebogen LLC, had a simple message for those attending Scrap Expo 2023: When it comes to material handlers, “maintenance is everything.”

Lannes spoke during the Material Handlers Maintenance session at the second annual Scrap Expo, Sept. 12-13 in Louisville, Kentucky. He discussed in detail the negative effects neglecting routine, preventive maintenance can have on equipment.

“I have been working in the scrap industry for probably 27, 28 years [and] been running Sennebogen in North America for 20 years, and everything you do, [whether it is a] material handler, a baler, a shear—maintenance is the end-all, be-all for your results,” he said.

Preventive maintenance reduces operating costs, increases equipment availability, extends a component’s or a machine’s life and ensures lower fuel consumption, Lannes added.

“Every single dollar you save in preventive maintenance will cost you between $15 and $20 later,” Lannes said.

“A lot of people say, ‘I can push that interval another 100 hours, another 200 hours, another 300 hours; this month is not good, let’s push into next month.’ … You get to a point where your filters are completely clogged, you’re burning a ton of diesel and, on top of it, you’re damaging your engine.

“It’s nice to have that additional load coming out of the yard and delivering it to the mill,” he added. “It’s nice to get that payment at the end of the month for scrap you delivered. But, by not doing proper maintenance, how much of that revenue you just got from that extra load you delivered this month is going to pay for those extra $15 or $20 where you could have spent $1 in preventive maintenance?”

Having a strategy

As with any other aspect of an operation, Lannes said, it’s crucial to have a strategy around performing maintenance to maximize uptime and equipment availability.

He detailed the five keys to proper maintenance strategy:

• know your equipment;
• properly train personnel;
• handle tasks at the correct intervals;
• use proper fluids and lubricants; and
• use quality spare parts.

Lannes stressed that the “absolute key” to ensuring proper maintenance is knowing your equipment. It does no good to have what he called a “so-called technician” who has other jobs around the yard perform maintenance tasks such as changing oil and doing inspections.

“The person has no clue what he’s doing; he has no idea what he’s looking at,” Lannes said. “He’ll change the oil, will give it a clean bill of health and say, ‘Continue to operate.’ … [But] you have to know the equipment.”

Inspections are important

Knowing your equipment starts with conducting daily inspections. Eleven years ago, Lannes and his team at Sennebogen started analyzing reasons for equipment failures and why they were encountering problems with different components. They concluded that oftentimes it was a maintenance issue that could have been resolved with a thorough inspection.

“You can find a lot of stuff that will save you a ton of money if a daily inspection is done properly,” he said.

“Make sure your people are trained on how to do a daily inspection and preventive maintenance at regular intervals … and structural inspections have to be part of the daily inspection. You have to make sure the person walking around [inspecting the equipment] understands what they are looking for.”

Lannes provided a list of what material handler operators should look for during their daily inspections:

• Cylinder damage. A small leak on a cylinder today might mean a new cylinder months down the road, he said. “Because some seals are bad … you might end up with damage in the rod, damage in the barrel and having to replace the whole cylinder.”
• Hydraulic hoses. Lannes described oil buildup in the engine compartment as a “disaster waiting to happen.”
• Grapple cylinders and tips. Often, a grapple’s tips could be worn, but an operator doesn’t want to stop loading material, Lannes said. As these tips wear, the cylinder has to extend more and more. Depending on the equipment manufacturer, if the grapple doesn’t have a mechanical stop, the piston will hit the bottom of the barrel, leading to metal-on-metal contact. “It’s then a matter of time that you’ll have fines, and those fines go back into the tank and back through the main hydraulic circuit and one day your pump is dead,” he added.

The structural inspection aspect of a daily walk-through tends to be neglected, Lannes said, and “it’s an item that can save you a ton of money.”

The first step when performing a structural inspection is to see if there’s a pattern where the main bolt on the grapple repeatedly hits the bottom of the material handler’s stick. “These machines are designed to lift, they are not designed to get a bump from underneath at the end of the stick,” he said.

Lannes emphasized that a square plate never should be welded onto any element to repair a crack because it concentrates all the force and tension in that spot, leading to further damage. “It’s better to weld,” he said. “I guarantee you that boom will break exactly at that point [where the square plate was used].”

When it’s time to replace

Regardless of the maintenance strategy, components eventually will need to be replaced.

Lannes said manufacturers often will tell operators to use original spare parts when replacing an air filter, for example, but he noted that as long as operators replace a part with a high-quality, properly sized replacement, the part can be purchased from a different manufacturer.

“Please don’t try to replace it with some low-quality filter and say, ‘Oh, I just changed the filter,’” he added. “Yeah, you just changed the filter, but it doesn’t fit the housing properly [and] is bypassing the oil. That filter that you just saved $40 on will probably cost you a pump that will cost $20,000.

“Improper maintenance increases your running costs, decreases your uptime drastically and creates a safety hazard to your own operation and the environment,” Lannes concluded.

The author is managing editor of Recycling Today and can be reached at mmcnees@gie.net.