Global Gauge X-Ray Thickness Gauges – An Overview

Global Gauge builds the world’s best thickness gauges here in the USA.

Global Gauge Systems are not widgets. As any customer in the steel industry knows, investing in maintaining capital equipment is of the utmost importance to your plant’s future uptime and profitability. Further to this point – Preventative Maintenance is a necessary and critical exercise for steel producers and processors to continue to recognize an ROI from their capital equipment year after year.

In this day and age, staffing challenges are a serious talking point for any producer or processor. It seems quality personnel is harder and harder to find. And with maintenance being such a “tribal knowledge” area of a business, customers are continually dependent on their vendors to assist with maintaining and ensuring their capital equipment is in good working condition. Many plants may have technicians who have spent the last 20-30 years becoming experts on gauging, but that tribal knowledge is more of a risk now than it has ever been. As the generation of current technicians inches closer toward retirement, companies struggle to hire people to become the next generation of expertise. This trend is putting the responsibility more and more on the equipment and system suppliers to be there for their customers when they need support. For Global Gauge, this means being present and available when our customers need us the most.

Any thickness gauge requires ongoing preventative maintenance, as thickness gauges are complex capital equipment with many moving parts and critical components. Global Gauge thickness gauging systems are maintained via preventative maintenance and calibration services on a quarterly, semi-annual, and annual basis, depending on the criticality of the application and the environment of the customer’s installation.

Typical preventative maintenance and regular services include the following:

• Identifying issues of wear and tear and flagging components for repair or replacement if necessary
• Confirmation of electrical, mechanical, and control parameters are all within expected operating ranges.
• Overall system specification verification.
• Recalibration or recertification to standards samples if required.
• Wipe testing of isotope sources to ensure safe, environmentally friendly working conditions.
• Confirmation of mill interface communications.
• Training as needed and requested.

There hasn’t been a more opportune time for customers to be proactive about their gauging. Global supply chain shortages stemming from COVID-19 make it more difficult to get parts on time. This delays new systems, upgrades, and any components that a design may depend upon. The best approach for customers with critical capital equipment requirements is to maintain what they have as proactively as possible. Preventative maintenance is a key aspect of this strategy.

In some cases, where a customer may have an outdated or misplaced set of calibration samples, customers send their thickness standards magazines or handheld samples to GGC to evaluate and repair if necessary. We can also recertify the samples on GGC’s in-house gauging systems. Additional calibration and recertification practices may be performed at Global Gauge’s manufacturing headquarters.

As GGC’s standards are traceable to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), you can ensure that the samples you receive back are as precise as possible.

As we continue to navigate the current world is experiencing with supply chain and labor, we understand that steel producers and processors will need reliability and support. Global Gauge is doubling down on our efforts to be there for the North American steel market for many years to come.

Reach out to Global Gauge today at (937) 254-3500 if you have any needs with recertification and calibration of samples or preventative maintenance of thickness gauging equipment.

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