Condition monitoring specialist company, WearCheck, is proud to announce that its Asset Reliability Care (ARC) division officially has Africa’s first and only CAT IV instructor, after technical and training manager, Louis Peacock, passed his final exam with flying colours.

CAT certification is achieved through the Mobius Institute, a worldwide provider of education in reliability improvement, condition monitoring and precision maintenance. WearCheck is one of a few certified Mobius training centres for Africa, and now the only centre having a local person presenting the CAT IV course.

Training courses are run by WearCheck anywhere, any date, on demand.

The CAT courses include Vibration CAT I (junior analyst and data collector), Vibration CAT II (intermediate analyst and data collector), Vibration CAT III (senior analyst with supervisor roles) and Vibration CAT IV (expert analyst with additional roles and expert techniques).

For the stringent CAT IV certification, students must pass the exam with >70% and work through 52 hours of on-line videos during part one.  Part two entails 40 hours of classroom-based instructor-led coursework and students must have the required number of years’ condition monitoring experience as per (ISO 18436-2), (ISO 18436-1, ISO/IEC 17024), (ISO 18436-3) certification.

The CAT IV course covers:

• Advanced signal processing
• Cross channel measurements
• Dynamics (mass/stiffness/damping, natural frequencies, modes)
• Resonance testing (run-up/coast down tests, impact tests, ODS, modal analysis)
• Corrective action (flow control, resonance correction, isolation, and damping)
• Proximity probe and casing measurements
• Orbit and centreline plot analysis
• Rotor dynamics (natural frequencies, modelling)
• Journal bearings (design, fluid film instabilities)
• Flexible rotor balancing
• Torsional vibration

Peacock, who aced the course with an 80 – 90% pass rate, had this to say, ‘I relished the challenges presented by the comprehensive course material, and I’m pleased that all the extra hours of hard work have paid off. One thing is for sure - the CAT-IV course transforms a very good vibration analyst into a vibration super-hero!’

Peacock’s high marks earned him a distinction, which enables him to register as the first and only CAT IV instructor in Africa – a feat that nobody else on the continent has yet achieved.

There are only eight other CAT IV analysts in Africa, but Peacock is the first and only instructor. On a global level, there are only 249 CAT IV analysts, broken down as follows: Africa (9), Asia (55), Australia (29), South America (13), North America (25), Europe (93) and Middle East (25).

Following Peacock’s lead, several additional WearCheck ARC technicians achieved other CAT certification in 2021/2022:  CAT I  (12), CAT II  (8) and CAT III (2).

The next scheduled in-class CAT IV courses to be run by WearCheck take place from 23-27 January 2023 and 24-28 July 2023: The first 10 students enrolling for the January course at US$5,000.00, will undergo the following:

• Part one: 90 hours of video
• 48 additional workshop preparation hours at the Longmeadow training Centre.
• 45 Hours compulsory in-class training and five hours certification.