Hari Viswanathan, Senior Director of Products, UE Systems
Keeping critical machinery running smoothly requires more than routine inspections; it requires catching issues early enough to prevent damage before it starts. Traditional vibration and temperature monitoring have long been staples in maintenance programs, but they often reveal problems only after damage is already developing. Today, the OnTrak Wireless from UE Systems is changing the game by combining ultrasound, vibration, and temperature in a single sensor, giving teams a far earlier and more complete picture of bearing health. Ultrasound, in particular, can “listen” to microscopic friction and impacts that signal lubrication issues and early-stage defects long before they appear in vibration or temperature trends.
To explore how this integrated approach is reshaping condition monitoring, we spoke with Hari Viswanathan, Senior Director of Products at UE Systems, who shared his expert insights on using ultrasound-driven data to improve lubrication practices, prevent failures, and extend asset life.
Q1. How does ultrasound enable earlier detection of bearing issues compared to traditional vibration analysis, and what kinds of faults can it identify before they escalate?
Hari: Ultrasound “hears” friction and microscopic impacts inside a bearing long before those issues are strong enough to show up as classic vibration faults or temperature rise. OnTrak Wireless takes that a step further. Instead of logging only a single decibel value, the 950BT sensor captures the full ultrasonic waveform—tens of thousands of high‑frequency data points in every 3‑second reading. From that raw signal, UE Systems’ algorithms calculate simple indicators and thresholds so the user sees an easy story: a modest rise, typically around 8 dB above the bearing’s baseline, points to a lubrication problem, while larger changes (16 dB and beyond) signal the beginning of bearing damage—still well before changes appear in vibration or temperature trends.
OnTrak Wireless 950BT Sensor
From a fault‑coverage point of view, the ultrasound channel in OnTrak Wireless can reveal lack of lubrication, over lubrication (grease churning), early‑stage bearing defects (micropitting or brinelling) and increasing impacting severity. When combined with the sensor’s built‑in vibration and temperature channels, the system can also characterize mechanical looseness, misalignment, imbalance, belt issues, and general mechanical defects, starting with the earliest friction changes rather than waiting for late‑stage vibration signatures.
A recent OnTrak Wireless case on a recirculation fan showed ultrasound alarms rising a full month before vibration acceleration finally moved enough to trigger a vibration alarm. That early warning gave the plant time to plan a controlled shutdown and address the bearing before damage escalated, avoiding potential catastrophic financial losses. Because the system stores the actual ultrasonic signal, users can also remotely “listen” to the bearing and correlate what they hear with the trend, which builds trust in the alarms and automated recommendations.
Q2. Can you explain how OnTrak Wireless combines ultrasound, vibration, and temperature monitoring in one system, and why this integration is important for maintenance teams?
Hari: OnTrak Wireless is built around the 950BT wireless sensor, which houses ultrasound, vibration (velocity and acceleration), and temperature in a single device. These sensors stream both condition indicators and the underlying ultrasonic waveform back to the OnTrak Wireless gateway, which then feeds UE Insights—UE Systems’ browser based analytics and dashboarding platform. That means a maintenance team doesn’t just see a dB trend; they get a unified health view and, when needed, can remotely “hear” what the bearing is doing without ever going out to the asset.
UE Insights provides a clear picture of bearing health in a user-friendly dashboard.
Ultrasound is used as the primary indicator of friction and lubrication condition; vibration adds rich information on machine dynamics (unbalance, misalignment, looseness, resonance, etc.); and temperature validates severity and can point to secondary effects like overheating or contamination. Having all three in one sensor means maintenance teams don’t have to manage separate systems and databases. Instead, they see one unified health view for each bearing, with thresholding, trending, and alarms all handled in a single platform.
Perhaps most importantly, teams don’t need specialized training in ultrasound or vibration data interpretation. OnTrak does the interpretation for you, automatically flagging lubrication needs, early-stage issues, or critical conditions. This reduces setup complexity, speeds up diagnosis, and makes it easy for teams to trust and act on the data without being experts.
Q3. How does OnTrak Wireless transform raw condition monitoring data into actionable maintenance decisions, particularly for automated lubrication?
Hari: OnTrak Wireless continuously trends ultrasonic data (friction), vibration, and temperature against baselines for each bearing. UE Insights then applies preset rules and machine learning to flag what it finds. Because OnTrak stores and processes the full ultrasonic signal, those rules are increasingly driven not just by overall dB level but by calculated fault and lubrication indices derived from the waveform—patterns of impacts, friction, and modulation that help separate “needs grease” from “has damage” more reliably than a single amplitude threshold.
It can classify a reading as “lubrication required,” “early signs of failure,” or “critical condition,” based on how many decibels the signal rises above the baseline. Typical thresholds are +8 dB for lubrication required, +16 dB for early damage, and larger increases indicating a critical, near failure state.
UltraTrak Vario automated lubricator paired with the 950BT Sensor.
For lubrication, the system doesn’t just raise a generic alarm. It ties friction trends directly to remote lubricators (UltraTrak Vario). When friction crosses a threshold, UE Insights notifies the user and can either suggest a lubrication action or automatically send a command to the lubricator to dispense a precise amount of grease (depending on user preference). During and after that lube event, OnTrak Wireless monitors friction in real time; if the decibel level drops back to baseline, the system confirms that the bearing was lubricated correctly, logs the grease volume used, and updates the bearing’s condition history.
This closed loop workflow—detect friction change → recommend or trigger grease → verify friction returns to baseline → record the event—turns raw ultrasound/vibration/temperature data into very concrete actions.
Q4. How does this approach improve bearing life compared to traditional time-based schedules?
Hari: Time-based lubrication assumes a fixed amount of grease at fixed intervals, based on theoretical calculations. In reality, load, speed, temperature, contamination, and installation quality vary constantly, so time-based programs routinely under- or over-grease bearings. Studies show that roughly 80-90% of premature bearing failures are linked to lubrication issues—wrong amount, wrong grease, or contamination.
OnTrak Wireless flips that logic. Lubrication happens only when friction tells you it’s needed, and it stops as soon as the bearing returns to its normal baseline. By doing that, it avoids the two main killers of bearing life: running dry (metal to metal contact and rapid wear) and chronic over-greasing (churning, heat buildup, seal damage, and contamination ingress).
With the OnTrak Wireless system, users typically eliminate about 95% of manual lubrication tasks, significantly cut grease consumption, and see corresponding drops in premature bearing failures—all indicators of longer bearing life and more stable mean time between failures across the asset base.
Q5. What makes ultrasound sensors easier to deploy and scale across multiple assets or sites compared to conventional vibration systems?
Hari: Traditional online vibration systems—and many newer “wireless” offerings—often require extensive wiring, specialized data collectors, and separate software stacks for vibration, ultrasound, and lubrication.
The 950BT wireless sensors communicate over a long-range wireless network (up to ~1,300 ft/400 m in open space) back to a gateway that can support up to 40 devices, with an IP66 rated housing suitable for harsh environments. This architecture lets you quickly blanket a plant with sensors without running long cable trays or pulling new power and signal lines to every bearing.
From a software perspective, UE Insights provides prebuilt dashboards, configurable widgets, and centralized device/user management, so you can oversee thousands of sensors across many lines or sites in one interface rather than juggling multiple vibration platforms.
And finally, ultrasound sensors like the 950BT do not require precise positioning of the sensor on the monitored asset, unlike vibration sensors that record vibration directionally (x/y/z axis orientation matters), ultrasound sensors are a lot more forgiving of sensor placement, making them easier to install.
The OnTrak Wireless system can be easily installed onto grease points or via remote grease lines. This combination of simpler hardware, flexible networking, and centralized management is what makes ultrasound solutions like Ontrak Wireless particularly scalable.
Q6. Can you share a real example of how integrating OnTrak Wireless into a maintenance program has saved costs, reduced downtime, or extended asset life?
Hari: One clear example comes from Arch Resources, a major metallurgical coal producer that relies heavily on long conveyor systems. They were experiencing premature conveyor bearing failures and unplanned downtime due to inconsistent lubrication. Some bearings were starved, others badly over-greased. By deploying the OnTrak Wireless with UE Insights, they moved to true condition-based lubrication, remotely greasing bearings only when ultrasound indicated friction was rising.
Within a few weeks, they discovered they had been massively over greasing. Before OnTrak Wireless, the conveyors consumed about 1,587.56 grams of grease per month; after implementation, usage dropped to just 0.85 grams per month—a 99.95% reduction in grease consumption. At the same time, the ability to trend bearing health and lubricate remotely smoothed out conveyor performance, reduced the number of bearing interventions, and cut the risk of unexpected failures and stoppages.
Q7. For teams new to ultrasound technology, how intuitive is the OnTrak Wireless interface in helping them interpret bearing health data and take corrective actions?
Hari: OnTrak Wireless is intentionally designed so you don’t have to be an ultrasound or vibration analyst to use it. UE Insights, the web-based platform behind OnTrak Wireless, provides preconfigured dashboards, simple visualization widgets (single values, trend lines, tables, etc.), and built-in alert categories for lubrication required, early failure, and critical failure.
For users who still like to “trust their ears,” the platform can also present recorded ultrasonic samples, so they can listen to what the bearing sounded like when an alert was raised and connect that sound with the on‑screen indicators. Assets are typically color-coded and prioritized so users can see immediately which bearings need attention and why.
UE Insights mobile app allows teams to view alerts and make decisions conveniently and on-the-go.
For lubrication, the interface shows starting/ending decibel levels, grease volume dispensed, remaining grease, and time since last lube cycle. Because everything is browser based, accessible from PCs, tablets, or phones, and shipped with sensible defaults, new teams can usually start making good decisions quickly: “This bearing needs grease now,” “Stop greasing this one,” or “This one looks like a mechanical defect. Schedule an inspection.” As the team gains confidence, they can dive deeper into the trends and diagnostics, but the day-to-day workflows are intentionally straightforward.
Bottom Line
As maintenance and reliability teams look for ways to move beyond reactive work and truly extend the life of their assets, ultrasound-based condition monitoring is a foundational part of modern lubrication and bearing health strategies. Solutions like OnTrak Wireless remove the guesswork by turning friction, vibration, and temperature data into clear, automated actions that protect bearings long before traditional indicators show a problem. With this early detection strategy, plants can cut unnecessary grease use, eliminate manual tasks, and prevent the premature bearing failures that drive unplanned downtime and lost production.
If you're looking to build a more proactive maintenance program, or want to see how ultrasound combined with temperature and vibration data can transform the way your team lubricates and protects critical assets, visit UE Systems to learn more about OnTrak Wireless and the full range of ultrasound solutions.
