Heavy equipment in construction job sites presents challenges to maintenance personnel and operators. The reason behind it is that breakdowns tend to be expensive every year.
With this in mind, it’s essential to establish a carefully planned, cost-focused heavy equipment maintenance program to avoid frequent heavy equipment failures, prevent future expenses, and improve schedule attainment.
Whether you’re just planning to purchase excavators for sale or you have a fleet of heavy equipment to take care of, below are some tips to maintain your heavy-duty equipment:
Pay Importance to the Equipment’s Environment
It matters where you use and store your heavy equipment. Weather elements, including freezing temperatures, mud, and extreme heat, may affect your machine and necessitate various maintenance requirements.
Companies that operate in extreme environmental conditions, where stress is placed on the heavy equipment, must conduct regular maintenance if they’re operating in mild conditions. This is especially true if you’re operating SCE used equipment. So, extra care and proper storage can make a difference to make your heavy equipment last longer.
Operate Heavy Duty Equipment Based on Its Performance Limits
To lessen equipment failures and repairs, operators must observe published performance limits for any heavy-duty equipment. Also, clear operating procedures must be established right from the start, and operators must be trained to follow the recommended practices.
Feeds, speeds, torque limits, load, and so on must be controlled and monitored carefully by operators. Excessive wear and tear of some operating parts can affect the performance of the equipment and may shorten its lifespan.
Check Fluids
One of the essential parts of heavy equipment monitoring and maintenance is to keep the fluids at the correct level and right quality, which is vital to ensure better equipment performance.
If you ignore the fluids, your equipment will suffer from increased wear and may not run efficiently. Thus, ensure that your fluids are filled based on the manufacturer’s specifications. It’s because overfilling the fluids in your equipment may result in overheat.
One of the fluids that you must keep an eye on is your equipment’s oil because it can affect the machine’s performance. If possible, check the oil for contaminants to ensure that the quality is not affected. You should also keep your oil at an appropriate level and perform oil changes at a recommended interval.
Create A Checklist
It’s always a great idea to have a monthly, weekly, and daily checklist at the start of every shift to inspect every piece of heavy-duty equipment for problems and parts requiring essential servicing.
Such checklists must include safety items, operating parts, lubrication, and cleaning. If possible, park your heavy-duty equipment in safe places after using it to lessen the required maintenance work over time.
Develop A Preventative Maintenance Program
Reactive maintenance, which is repairing equipment once it breaks, is more expensive compared to planned maintenance. To avoid expensive maintenance costs, consider innovating maintenance and have a preventative maintenance program for your heavy-duty equipment.
This maintenance program can be based on the operating manuals or repair procedures of the equipment’s manufacturer. This will let you schedule heavy-duty equipment properly.
Create A Rapid Response Team
For long-term or big projects, it can be cost-effective to create a team for rapid response repair. Depending on some circumstances, this team will be available whenever they’re needed for spare parts, which can be beneficial to fix your equipment immediately.
A rapid response team can also save your time by looking for compatible spare parts required to repair your equipment. So, if you don’t want to stop your business operations for several hours or days because of equipment failure, investing in a rapid response team is a wise idea.
Train Your Operators for Proper Machinery Use
Once you train your operators on how to use heavy-duty equipment properly, you also lessen the chances they’ll engage in practices that would damage the equipment. Depending on the equipment you’re using, training may include information about how to identify common problems and perform safety inspection checks. Once problems are spotted immediately, operators can keep your heavy-duty equipment running at top performance and make necessary repairs to avoid serious issues.
Clean Your Heavy-Duty Equipment Regularly
Cleaning doesn’t only revolve around improving your equipment’s aesthetics. While keeping your equipment looking good is great for your company’s image, cleaning is a great opportunity for your workers to check for any side of the damage, which is also a form of maintenance.
Moreover, since debris and dirt can block the moving parts of your equipment, cleaning them regularly is crucial as it makes it easier to spot damage and keep your equipment running.
