Hour Meter for Machine Maintenance

[Nick Sorenson]

Does Grizzly own stock in an oil company?

LOL.

At 20 hour oil change intervals maybe they should put an oil filter on there. lol.

I'd doubt the gears see much wear. I change my oil once every few years if I remember. I just took the gearbox apart for a byrd head install and the gears looked perfect.

[Rod Sheridan]

You mean something like this?

Attachment 214909

I'm impressed, I had to add that to my machine...................Rod.

[Gary Curtis]

This is what all small aircraft use to schedule maintenance:

http://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/inpages/hobbs.php

A Hobb's Meter. $25.

[Kent A Bathurst]

Factory guys will know this.....hours-based maintenance schedules are the way to do it. If you set up your PM on a calendar, the odds are you are [a] not doing it often enough, or [b] wasting $ by doing it too often, or [c] right on target by sheer dumb luck. And when you've got a jillion machines and a dozen maintenance guys earning more per hour than anyone else, you've gotta be sure both asset groups are being used efficiently.

But - a year on your planer could well be much different than a year on my planer.

Having said all that- I'd have to believe that Grizzly isn't very worried. "Yearly" covers a wide, wide range of actual run time..........they just want to be sure you do it sometime, and they aren't [and shouldn't be on this machine] very worried exactly when. I'd bet for most of us "every 5 years" is more than enough. At least, I'm hoping so..............

[Charlie Barnes]

Thanks for all of the input guys. Thad's setup with a small meter right on the switch box is what I was originally thinking of. However the meters that are self powered and use vibration input are interesting as well. From what I can see, the only down side to them is that it doesn't look like the battery is replaceable. But they do have a stated 8 year life, so maybe that's OK. Admittedly, this is probably overkill as some has mentioned. However Kent has nailed the issue regarding the way manufacturing guys view maintenance. I work at Toyota's North American Manufacturing HQ, so I'm sure that has colored my thinking on this. Anyway, thanks again for all of the good ideas.

[Kent A Bathurst]

Charlie - your thinking is not wrong at all.

It's just that in the consumer end of this stuff, the mfg companies sit back and think "how can we word this so that anyone can get it right, and nothing will ever go wrong due to insufficient maintenance?"

I've changed the gear oil on my planer twice in 13 years......the last time was last year.......stuff looked like it came out of the jug - complete waste of time, but the hourly wage is zero, so no real loss.........