Over 40% of rotating equipment failures start in a bearing, and its vibration changes weeks before anything else does. By the time it is hot to the touch or grinding, about the last tenth of its life is left.
A rotor out of balance or a coupling off centre never stops the machine. It just wears the bearings out faster and burns extra electricity, month after month. Both are visible in the vibration from the start.
ISO 20816 sorts a reading into four zones: as new, fine long-term, run a while but plan the repair, stop now. The number does not only say something is wrong — it says how much time you have.
Nobody can put an analyst on forty machines every month. Continuous readings narrow it down to the two that changed, so the specialist's day goes where it matters.
Pumps, fans, compressors, motors, gearboxes — anything that turns. The sensor sits on the bearing housing, held by a magnet or a stud. No wiring, no cabinet, and no need to stop the machine to fit it.
There is no single number that means «healthy» for every machine. The sensor learns what yours looks like when it is running well, and the warning comes when it drifts away from that — its own history, not somebody else's table.
The calendar knows the date. It does not know the machine
Two identical pumps, one running around the clock and one twice a week, sit on the same service interval. One gets opened while it is perfectly healthy. The other waits past the point where it needed attention.
Every strip-down is hours of downtime, and a machine put back together is not always better than it was. Failures often appear shortly after an intervention rather than before one.
Bearings fail when they fail, not when the interval says so. A service record proves that you did your part — it does not tell you what has changed since.