Maintaining and servicing actuators

The service offering from Rotork Site Services (RSS) addresses the need to monitor and maintain actuators that manage the flow of liquids and gases in industrial processes. Its offering includes a lifetime management package to ensure optimum performance and avoid failures. 

Rotork’s Reliability Services has three tiers – basic, standard and premium – providing different levels of cover depending on how critical each actuator is to a process. While under the basic package engineers visit a site to inspect the actuators, under the premium offering they visit more frequently, inspect the internal workings and change seals, oil and parts as required. 

This can be combined with intelligent asset management using actuators fitted with data loggers, such as the IQ3 Pro range. These collect data on everything from vibration, temperature and torque to the number of starts and whether the unit has lost power. This enables engineers to assess the health of an actuator and make recommendations around maintenance. 

Rotork’s Pakscanä technology has also been developed to control a number of motorised valves and constantly monitors the actuators to make sure nothing unexpected is happening. It enables an operator to override automatic settings and operate any individual actuator. 

A reliable maintenance plan can help reduce downtime

Lifecycle maintenance 

Rotork’s approach to monitoring and maintaining actuators as they age also helps customers plan for the cost of replacements. It ranks each actuator at one of four stages: preferred product, supported product, mature product, or obsolete product. For preferred products, both the spares and knowledge are readily available to repair and service them. But Rotork also manages older actuators through its lifecycle management and obsolescence approach. 

If some products are obsolete, spares may no longer be available, but they could continue to operate for another 10 years. If any become unavailable, however, instead of a less costly repair they could require replacement, so if a number of assets require replacement at the same time the company could face a large, unexpected cost. 

A recent obsolescence survey at one of the main fuel tanks at the UK’s Gatwick Airport identified obsolete actuators and the airport decided to replace 24, adding the new ones to its maintenance contract. While obsolete actuators aren’t normally taken into service contracts, Rotork engineers continue to support customers with all of their assets, regardless of age. 

Advanced analytics improve reliability and availability of key assets

In-house service expertise 

Even if a company hasn’t taken out a maintenance contract, Rotork engineers are available to fix problems. Rotork Site Services employs more than 300 engineers who are based all around the world and can be called upon to repair actuators if something goes wrong. They have advanced diagnostic tools and access to the company’s engineering resources. 

Rotork also offers a workshop service where customers can send actuators to be repaired and then returned to them. RSS also offers an upgrade service through which electric actuators and control systems are fitted within existing plants, as well as valve automation service. 

For more information, visit: Rotork: Rotork Reliability Services 

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