Shaft Alignment & Field Balancing
Course Overview
This course provides practical knowledge of precision shaft alignment and in-situ rotor balancing. Participants learn how misalignment and unbalance affect vibration, bearings, seals, couplings, energy consumption, and machinery service life.
The course covers measurement procedures, interpretation of results, corrective calculations, and verification of completed work. Practical examples demonstrate how to distinguish alignment and balance problems from soft foot, looseness, resonance, and other machinery faults.
Key Learning Objectives
Participants will learn how to:
- Identify angular and offset misalignment
- Detect and correct soft foot
- Perform laser shaft-alignment measurements
- Consider thermal growth and operating conditions
- Diagnose unbalance using amplitude and phase
- Conduct safe and effective field balancing
Course Content
- Shaft alignment principles and terminology
- Angular and parallel offset misalignment
- Coupling and machine-train considerations
- Alignment tolerances and acceptance criteria
- Pre-alignment inspection
- Soft-foot types, detection, and correction
- Rim-and-face and reverse-dial concepts
- Laser alignment procedures
- Thermal growth and target alignment
- Pipe strain and foundation influences
- Alignment-result interpretation and documentation
- Static, couple, and dynamic unbalance
- Balancing planes and correction weights
- Vibration amplitude and phase measurement
- Single-plane and two-plane balancing
- Influence coefficient method
- Trial-weight selection and placement
- Resonance and balancing limitations
- Post-correction verification and reporting
- Practical alignment and balancing examples
Who Should Attend?
Maintenance engineers, rotating equipment technicians, vibration analysts, commissioning personnel, reliability engineers, and field service professionals.