From 1 September, every blower we dispatch carries its own commissioning card

Most of the trouble a new fan gives in its first month is not a fan-build problem. It is what happened between our dispatch dock and the first start — a machine bolted down on green concrete, ducting hung off the casing flanges, the yellow transport brackets left in the bellows, or two supply leads nobody swapped after the bump test. Every one of those is preventable in the ten minutes before someone presses start, and every one of them is expensive by the time it is diagnosed.

So we wrote the whole of it down. JEE-SVC-008 is a four-page field card — installation, commissioning and operation for belt, coupled and direct-drive centrifugal fans. From 1 September 2026 it goes out physically with every single blower we dispatch, so that the engineer standing at the machine finds it without having to call anybody.

What is on the four pages

• 01
  Before you install

  Check for transit damage before you sign the delivery note, and what to do in the 48 hours if there is any. Which documents must stay with the fan. How to tell a belt, coupled or direct-drive machine apart, because some instructions apply to only one. Lifting by the base frame and never by the motor eyebolt. Storage up to 45 days and beyond it. And the one-third grease rule, with the two pictures that settle the argument.

• 02
  Install it right

  Foundation and levelling — M20 concrete, a 28-day cure, mass 3 to 5 times the fan, and the spirit level on the pedestal plate under the bearings, never on the casing. Bellows at both inlet and outlet, ducting on its own supports. Then one column each for belt tension, dial-indicator coupling alignment and inlet-cone clearance — the engineer reads only the column that matches the fan in front of them. Electrical connection, overload setting and phase rotation.

• 03
  First start & commissioning

  A ten-point check before anyone presses start. The bump test against the arrow on the casing. Five minutes listening. Eight hours watching the bearing temperature, with the curve drawn. Then the baseline: vibration in mm/s r.m.s. at both bearings against ISO 14694 BV-3 limits, plus a commissioning record to fill in, photograph and keep with the fan.

• 04
  Run, maintain, put it right

  Limits at a glance for bearing temperature, vibration, motor current and belt deflection. Daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly schedules. Re-lubrication by running hours rather than by the calendar, and impeller-cleaning intervals set by what the fan actually handles — monthly on sticky duty, twelve months on clean air. Then an eleven-symptom fault table: what you see, what usually causes it, what to do.

The paragraph that will save the most phone calls

A new fan runs hot at first, and that is normal. Between thirty minutes and two hours, 100–115 °C at the bearings is expected while fresh grease churns before it settles — and then the temperature should start falling. Page 3 says so plainly, draws the curve, and then tells your engineer exactly where normal stops and we want the call: still climbing after three hours, not settled by twenty-four, or above 115 °C at any point. We would rather write that down once than take the same worried call at eleven at night, forty times a year.

What we would ask of you

Put the card in the hands of whoever stands at the fan.

• Route it to your site team, your erector, or your client's maintenance head. The card is written for the person holding a spanner, not for a purchase file. If it stops at the stores gate it has done nothing.
• The commissioning record on page 3 is a hand-back document. Filled in, signed and photographed, it closes out an installation and hands your client the baseline that every future diagnosis is measured against. A move from 1.8 to 3.5 mm/s tells you something even while it is still inside the limit — but only if somebody wrote down the 1.8.
• Tell your engineer to quote the J-number on every call. It puts the GA drawing, the test certificate and the duty point in front of us before they have finished the sentence.
• Need more copies — for an O&M dossier, a multi-fan site, or your own service vans? Ask, and we will send them across.

When the card is not enough

The card is deliberately a summary: four pages that fit in a pouch on the machine. When something needs diagnosing properly, the full guides are on the site — written by our service engineers from ten years of field work, on fans and blowers of any make. Symptom, how to diagnose it, the usual root causes, the fix, and how to stop it coming back. There are fifteen of them, and the QR code on page 4 of the card goes straight there.

• All fifteen troubleshooting guides →
• Commissioning & installation errors
• High vibration after commissioning
• Bearing running hot or noisy
• Damage found on arrival
• Fan not making its duty
• Belt drives: slip, smoke, misalignment
• Fan & blower glossary

This is revision 01 — tell us what it does not answer

If your site team hits something this card does not cover, that is a gap in the card and not in them. Send it to us and it goes into Rev 02 — the second revision is far easier to make than the first was. The full manual, JEE-MAN-001, governs in every case, and we will send a copy to anyone who wants one.

And when you do call us, send these four things with it: your J-number, photographs of the nameplate and of the installation, what the symptom is in your own words, and the bearing temperature and vibration readings. With those we can usually answer the same day. Without them we are guessing alongside you.

Jitamitra Electro Engineering · Published 17 August 2026. News and updates from the works at MIDC Ahilyanagar.