Your industrial oven is an essential component of your finishing line. To ensure your oven is working properly and is in ideal condition, it is important to follow a regular preventative maintenance (PM) schedule. Preventative maintenance is a program that ensures regular and routine maintenance on a piece of equipment in order to keep it running and prevent any unplanned downtime or equipment failures.

Typically, an oven manufacturer will provide you with a PM schedule and checklist. This checklist identifies items that need maintenance and will help to prevent bigger issues by scheduling maintenance that is typically based on operational hours. These checklists can be done by any maintenance personnel; however, they are usually done by the machine operator if properly trained. Having a PM plan in place is the first step in running the facility more efficiently and will help in reducing the cost of operations. The second step is making sure your staff are fully aware of the plan and trained accordingly to carry out the procedures and tasks regularly.

In addition to regular maintenance, it is critical that you have your spare parts list stocked for your oven. Having the spare parts stocked in your facility greatly reduces the chance of unwanted downtime. Along with eliminating unwanted downtime, having stocked parts will eliminate excessive expediting or shipping costs and maintain better client relationships by delivering their product in a timely manner. A spare parts list is typically given along with the PM schedule by the manufacturer.

Inspect Interior of Oven
Electrical Components: When an oven has dirty electrical components, it is not able to disperse heat as well as it should. Having dust and dirt buildup on your electrical components can cause the heaters and circuits in your oven to short out and possibly fail. A few maintenance checks for electrical components include:

  • Lubricate motor bearings
  • Check all panel indicator lights
  • Check all emergency stop buttons for proper operation
  • Inspect for discolored or loose fuses

Read more: Preventative Maintenance for Industrial Ovens