Revitalization of the damaged machine parts by hard facing as a way of saving funds

Abstract

The objective of the research, presented in this paper, was to demonstrate the superiority of the hard facing as the revitalization technology of various damaged machine parts. The analysis of the two different revitalization methods of the damaged machine parts is presented – the replacement of the damaged part by the new – spare part and reparation by hard facing. The comparison is done on the example of hard facing and replacing of damaged loader's teeth. The paper presents a method for calculating costs of the two revitalization technologies based on their profitability and their comparison. That method could be applied for similar calculations for any machine part, with smallest or no adjustments. The paper presents a verification of advantage of applying the hard facing as the machine parts reparatory technology with respect to the other revitalization technology. The savings realized by application of hard facing reparation of the loader's teeth reach 73.5 % for one set of teeth and 82.40 per annum of the costs for purchasing the new spare parts. The analysis was conducted under an assumption that organization of the maintenance function is at the exceptionally high level so that the purchasing of the new part/repairing of the damaged one is always done in time. This idealized approach was adopted since in that way one obtains the least economic effects of the reparatory technology application with respect to replacing the part with the spare one. In any other case the economic effects would be significantly higher, namely even more positive in favor of the hard facing revitalization technology.