Systemizing Sampling Intervals
By Brett Winberg

Today, more than ever, organizations need to operate with a sampling schedule to truly maximize your sampling program and move your maintenance department to condition based monitoring… successfully.

The main objective of oil sampling is to find bad news before it finds you... and make proactive decisions based on sampling data. If your sampling intervals are loosely adhered to, you take a real risk of missing the 'one' report that could have saved you from real downtime.

Your equipment and oil conditions will usually give off silent alarms when problems first occur. When the condition increases, these alarms are not so silent anymore, and that is when condition based monitoring, by oil analysis can reveal most problems.

Would it be easier for you and your company if you had an option for your oil analysis program to tell you when to sample? What if an e-mail in the morning gave you a reminder that it is time to sample that one so important piece of equipment? What if your oil sample kits just showed up in the mail or on UPS to remind you it is time to sample? Whichever way you choose for your organization... make it into a 'system' and share it with everyone involved in the process. This will help to reduce missed samples and avoid unnecessary downtime.

There are many options that will remind you when it's time to pull your oil samples, and allow you the 'peace of mind' knowing that your equipment is being sampled at the proper intervals.

Get well informed about all the options available to give you peace of mind about sampling and reporting efficiencies. Once you determine your sampling frequency for a given piece of equipment, whether it is mileage intervals, hourly, weekly, monthly, or quarterly increments, it is always important to stick to a certain schedule.

We have put together this small chart below to assist you and your company on time intervals that are important for certain equipment types.

Equipment Type	Hours
Diesel Engines (off highway)	250
Gear Boxes	500
Hydraulic Systems	500
Gas Turbines Industrial	500
Transmissions	250/300
Bearing- Journals and roller elements	500
Aviation Hydraulics	100-200
Chillers	500
Air/Gas Compressors	500

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