Vibration Monitoring

Feel the Pulse of Every Machine

Identify Faults Before They Escalate with Vibration Analysis

Vibration Analysis

Vibration monitoring measures the motion and dynamic behavior of rotating and reciprocating equipment to detect developing mechanical faults. By analyzing vibration amplitude, frequency, and patterns over time, it reveals imbalance, misalignment, bearing wear, looseness, and other issues that compromise reliability. As one of the most proven and widely used condition monitoring methods, vibration analysis provides continuous, high-fidelity insight into machine health and performance.

Failure Modes Detected

  • Imbalance
  • Misalignment
  • Bearing defects
  • Mechanical looseness
  • Gear wear/eccentricity
  • Cavitation
  • Resonance or structural vibration
  • And more…

Customer Testimonials

"I used to spend about 50–70% of my time traveling to analyze issues. Now, with InsightCM, that's down to about 20%. It's also valuable to us and our customers to not have to wait 4–5 hours to start a 500MW unit. Everybody wins."

C.R.
Vibration Analyst
Midwest Power Plant

“We have nothing but great things to say about the Cutsforth brush systems here. Low costs, easy to maintain and no issues whatsoever.”

P.B.
Maintenance Superintendent
Midwest Power Plant

"Safety wise, [Brush Condition Monitoring] is a great system. We're not changing our brushes as often and our guys don't have to stick their hands in the machines to change them. We're able to change the brushes on an as needed basis, instead of an arbitrary number of brushes each month. We're seeing some O&M savings as well. We're probably able to save about 1/3 of our O&M budget since our operators aren't having to go out and check on the brushes as often. Our operators really like the system."

John Wilcox
O&M Superintendent
AEP Dresden (OH)

Vibration Monitoring Applications

Vibration analysis is one of the most effective methods for detecting mechanical faults, improving asset reliability, and reducing unplanned downtime. Cutsforth provides vibration monitoring solutions that scale across asset criticality—from low-cost wireless sensors to permanently installed systems for the most critical rotating equipment.

Wireless Vibration

Wireless vibration monitoring offers a cost-effective and easy-to-deploy way to expand condition monitoring coverage across large asset populations. Battery-powered wireless sensors eliminate the need for cabling, making them ideal for facilities looking to scale vibration monitoring quickly and affordably.

These solutions are well suited for motors, pumps, fans, and other common rotating equipment where continuous wired monitoring may not be practical. Wireless vibration data provides early indication of bearing faults, imbalance, misalignment, and looseness—helping teams move from reactive to predictive maintenance.

Key benefits:

  • Low installation cost and fast deployment
  • Scalable monitoring for large numbers of assets
  • Ideal for non-critical and semi-critical equipment

Balance of Plant Monitoring

Balance of Plant (BoP) vibration monitoring addresses the wide range of rotating equipment that supports core production processes. Cutsforth offers flexible vibration analysis solutions that support many asset types, sensor configurations, and monitoring architectures—both wired and wireless.

By combining vibration analysis with additional multiphysics monitoring options – ESA, EMI, IR Thermography, and process data – you can effectively cover all of your rotating or non-rotating equipment with an effective strategy.

Key benefits:

  • Broad coverage across diverse industrial assets
  • Flexible wired and wireless vibration solutions
  • Consistent monitoring strategy across the plant

Critical Asset Monitoring

For the most critical rotating equipment, Cutsforth provides the VDMS (Vibration Data Management System)—a permanently installed vibration monitoring system designed for continuous, high-fidelity data acquisition.   The VDMS connects directly to existing protection systems through buffered analog outputs.  This pass-through approach lets maintenance teams add modern, connected, online monitoring systems to legacy hardware with limited communication and analysis capability. Additionally, the buffered analog outputs serve as the security firewall to let plants connect data to standard, business IT networks, without a data diode, rather than the highly protected control networks.

Benefits:

  • Continuous, high-speed monitoring of critical assets
  • One-way communication eliminates security concerns
  • Leverages existing protection systems for low-cost install

InsightCM™: Smarter Vibration Monitoring

InsightCM delivers high-resolution vibration waveform capture, automated fault detection, and trend analysis — correlating vibration data with temperature, electrical, and process signals to provide a complete view of equipment health and early warning of mechanical degradation. 

  • Time Waveform
  • Spectrum
  • Full Spectrum
  • Fault Frequency Trends
  • Spectral Cursors
  • Orbit Plot
  • Bode Plot
  • Waterfall Plot
  • Shaft Centerline (Polar) Chart
  • Envelope Spectrum

Measurement Capabilities

How It Works

  • High-fidelity vibration data using 24-bit acquisition and fast sampling
  • Supports accelerometers, velocity probes, and proximity probes for broad machinery coverage
  • Intelligent edge processing enables continuous monitoring with efficient bandwidth and storage use

Vibration-Based Fault Detection:

  • Automated fault detection, trending, and cross-domain correlation with InsightCM
  • Proven hardware and deep expertise ensure accurate measurements and easy integration
  • Delivers reliable insights to help predict issues and prevent unplanned downtime

Hardware Options

Wired Measurement Platform
Wireless Options

Additional Resources

Case Study: Duke Energy Leverages IIoT for Predictive Maintenance
Webinar: InsightCM Introduction
White Paper: Wired or Wireless: Choosing the Right Sensors for CBM