Question for Jake re: IMS Guargian

[surf40]

I have a question for Jake about the IMS guardian. Being an Mechanical Engineer, I had several questions come to mind as I read the article in Excellence last night. I thought I’d ask on here so everybody could see the answers
1. How did you chose the gap in the sensor? Obviously, the closer the contacts, the less time it takes for ferrous flakes to collect to set off the alarm, and more false alarms. Too far apart and you could have a breakdown of the IMS without an alarm.
2. What kind of testing did you do? Did you put a known bad bearing in an engine, and run it with the Guardian until the alarm went off? If so, how many times did you test it? With a bad bearing, how long of engine run time did it take to set off the alarm.
3. Did you test it with good bearings? How many false positive indications did you experience during these tests?
4. How many times during testing did the Guarding fail to detect a bad bearing causing engine destruction?
I understand if you don’t feel comfortable answering these due to the proprietary concerns, but my training requires me to at least ask the questions.