AXILINEOn-site rotor balancing in Leiria and Marinha Grande: 160 km from our base
Moulds, glass, plastics and wood: in Leiria and Marinha Grande almost everything that gets made depends on machines that spin — machining-centre spindles, grinding wheels, plastics granulators, extraction and furnace fans. AXILINE has a single base, in Vila Nova de Gaia, and drives to you with the Balanset instruments: about 160 km down the A1, roughly two hours on the road. We balance the rotor in its own bearings, with no dismantling and nothing shipped away. At this distance the visit has to be planned ahead, and what really makes it pay is putting several machines into the same day.
160 km south: what that actually means
Our base is in Vila Nova de Gaia, at Rua das Colectividades 76 R/C ET. We have no branch, workshop or agent in Leiria or Marinha Grande, and we would rather say so up front: when a visit is booked, it is a van leaving Gaia in the morning. That has concrete consequences for the price, for the hour we arrive, and for how easily we can come back.
It is about 160 km on the A1, roughly two hours in normal traffic; Marinha Grande lies some 12 km west of Leiria, which adds little to the trip. A single-day visit is entirely possible: leave early, arrive before nine, work through to late afternoon, drive back in the evening. What does not fit into one day is an open-ended number of machines — every rotor needs an initial measurement, at least three start-ups and a check measurement at the same points.
That is why we push for grouping. If you have an extraction fan, a granulator and a grinding wheel all waiting, we put them into the same visit. And if the company in the next unit has the same complaint, it is worth talking to each other: travel is billed once per visit, not per machine and not per company.
- Single base: Rua das Colectividades 76 R/C ET, 4430-625 Vila Nova de Gaia. Kilometres are counted from here.
- Distance to Leiria: about 160 km via the A1. Marinha Grande is roughly 12 km further west.
- One trip can cover Leiria, Marinha Grande, Batalha, Porto de Mós, Maceira, Pombal, Ourém and Alcobaça, provided the sites sit on the same axis and the shutdown windows are agreed.
- A single machine: possible, but it carries the whole travel cost on its own.
- Three or four machines: travel is diluted and the working day pays for itself.
- Work running beyond one day: a per diem of 140 EUR per day applies, and we stay in the area rather than repeating 320 km of road.
Distance also changes how surprises are handled. In Porto, coming back two days later to see the machine hot is no problem. At 160 km, a return trip is a new journey — so we bring spare tooling, steel for the correction masses and consumables, and we would rather finish everything in the same visit even if it means staying later.
What a visit to Leiria and Marinha Grande costs
The price has two independent parts. The work depends on rotor size, not on the make of the machine. Travel depends on the address and is exactly the same whether you have one rotor to balance or five.
- Worked example for Leiria: about 160 km each way; take off the 20 km included and roughly 140 km remain chargeable, counted both ways — close to 280 km, that is about 170 EUR of travel per visit.
- That figure is the same for one machine or for five. With four rotors in one day, travel works out at roughly 42 EUR per machine.
- One small machine on its own: 300 EUR diagnostics + 250 EUR package S = 550 EUR, plus travel. It clears the 500 EUR minimum invoice, but it is the case where every euro of road weighs most.
- If your own people do the fitting and welding, it is included in the price. With our specialists, +150 EUR per rotor without welding and +400 EUR per rotor with welding.
- The exact travel figure is calculated from the road route to your address, not from a straight line on the map, and goes into the quotation before we leave Gaia.
- VAT at the applicable statutory rate is added to all prices.
| Item | Condition | Price + VAT |
|---|---|---|
| Vibration diagnostics with report | per machine, always billed | 300 EUR |
| Balancing, package S | up to 15 kW or up to 50 kg | +250 EUR |
| Balancing, package M | 15–75 kW or 50–500 kg | +450 EUR |
| Balancing, package L | 75–300 kW or 0.5–2 t | +700 EUR |
| Balancing, package XL | over 2 t or high running speed | from +1200 EUR |
| Mass fitting by AXILINE | without welding / with welding, per rotor | +150 / +400 EUR |
| Travel | first 20 km from the base included | then 0.60 EUR per km, round trip |
| Per diem | when the job runs longer than a day | 140 EUR per day |
| Minimum invoice | per visit | 500 EUR |
There is no rush surcharge and no remote-area supplement. What exists is mileage and, if the job does not fit into one day, a per diem of 140 EUR per day. Tell us how many machines there are in your very first message: it is the only variable that genuinely changes the cost per rotor. As for balancing quality grade under ISO 21940, on most fans, mills and pumps the package accuracy is enough — the applicable grade should be checked for the specific type of rotor.
What spins in Leiria and Marinha Grande
The region has an industrial profile of its own, and it shows in the enquiries. Along the Porto axis we mostly get industrial fans and pumps; here the phone rings about spindles, grinding wheels, granulators and glass-furnace fans.
Marinha Grande and Leiria form the Portuguese centre of mould and special-tooling making, with all the machining capacity that implies. Marinha Grande is also glass, a tradition going back to the eighteenth century. Around them, plastics injection fills half the industrial units. To the north and east lie the Leiria pine forest and the timber chain; between Porto de Mós, Batalha and Maceira sit the limestone massif and the stone, lime and cement industries. Each of these chains fails in its own way.
Moulds and machining
Machining-centre and milling spindles, grinding wheels, drive pulleys and shafts, oil-mist and swarf extraction. Here vibration is not heard first: it is seen on the part, as chatter marks and a surface finish that stops meeting spec. A grinding wheel goes out of balance again after every dressing and every remount on the flange.
Plastics injection
Granulators beside the moulding machines, vacuum and conveying blowers, axial fans on chillers and cooling towers, hopper dryers, hydraulic power-pack motors. The granulator is the champion for enquiries: every knife-set change or regrind leaves the rotor with a different mass distribution.
Glass
Combustion air fans, flue gas exhausters, cooling ventilation for forming machines and forehearths, annealing lehr fans, cullet crushers, batch-house elevators and mixers. Hot gas, batch dust and abrasive cullet change a rotor's balance in weeks rather than years.
Wood and the pine forest
The pinewood feeds sawmills, pallet plants, pellet plants and panel makers. Drum and disc chippers, hammer mills, pellet presses, extraction and cyclone fans, wide-belt sanders. Changing a knife or hammer set is the classic moment when vibration jumps.
Quarries, lime and cement
Jaw, impact and hammer crushers, mills, bucket elevators, de-dusting and kiln exhaust fans. Heavy rotors, fast abrasive wear and an environment where everything fills with dust — including the metal surfaces where our sensors have to sit.
Food, refrigeration and buildings
Industrial refrigeration, hall ventilation, centrifuges and separators, dryer fans, conveyor drives. They come up less often than moulds and glass, but they are frequently the machines that get added to a visit and make it worthwhile.
We do not publish client names or case numbers. If you want to know whether we have worked on a machine like yours, call and describe the equipment — we will answer straight, including when the answer is no.
What typically goes wrong on these machines
Unbalance almost never comes from the factory. It develops in service, and in each of these industries it develops in its own way. Knowing where it comes from changes the work plan and sometimes saves a pointless 160 km drive.
It is worth being clear about what balancing does and does not do. It reduces one thing: the 1x component, the vibration at rotational frequency. If what dominates is looseness, structural resonance, a damaged bearing or shaft misalignment, correction masses will not fix it — misalignment is a cause of vibration and is corrected by shaft alignment work, not by masses on the rotor. And residual unbalance is not just noise: it is a force loading the bearings around the clock, and the bearing life calculation under ISO 281 does not account for it unless it is deliberately built in.
- Grinding wheel: unbalance after dressing, uneven wear, or coolant soaked up during long stops. Corrected at the balancing flange, with the wheel mounted on the machine.
- Machining-centre spindle: chatter marks on the part and noise at certain speeds. Before talking about masses, it has to be confirmed whether the problem is the spindle, the tool and holder, or the workpiece overhang itself.
- Plastics granulator: new knives, knives ground unevenly, a lump of material welded to the rotor. The vibration level changes from one shift to the next.
- Extraction and cyclone fans: dust, resin and fibre build up unevenly. After the impeller is cleaned it is normal for things to be worse than before — and that is exactly the moment to balance.
- Glass furnace exhausters and fans: baked-on deposits, abrasive wear of the blade edges, thermal bow of the shaft. We measure with the machine hot and fit the masses once the casing has cooled to a safe temperature.
- Hammer crusher: one broken hammer, or a set replaced without weighing by position. Here balancing is the end of the repair job, not the beginning.
- Cooling tower fan: long light blades on a large diameter, scaling, corrosion and an adjustable blade pitch. Very sensitive to small masses, so it is balanced in small steps.
- Pulleys and drive shafts: a warped pulley or a badly tightened taper bush imitates unbalance perfectly, but is not cured with masses.
One case apart, common in the quarries around here: vibrating screens. They vibrate on purpose — the motion comes from exciters that are unbalanced by design, and there is nothing on the screen box to balance. What is balanced, when it makes sense, is the drive shaft, the pulley or the flywheel. If someone offers to balance the screen itself, it is worth asking exactly what is going to be corrected.
What a working day in Leiria looks like
Below is the shape of a day with three machines agreed in advance. The times are realistic rather than a promise: they shift with traffic on the A1, with the site safety induction, and above all with what the first measurement reveals.
| Time | What happens | What we need from you |
|---|---|---|
| 06:30 | Departure from Gaia with the Balanset instruments, tooling, steel for the masses and consumables. | Nothing — but cancelling at this hour already costs the journey. |
| 08:30 | Arrival, site entry, safety induction and passes, walk-round of the three machines. | A contact person at the gate and passes arranged in advance. |
| 09:00 | Machine 1: initial measurement at the bearings, checks for looseness, tightness and soft foot, spectrum to confirm whether 1x dominates. | The machine free to start and stop, and a 220 V socket nearby. |
| 10:00 | Trial run with a test mass, calculation, fitting of the correction mass, check run. | A fitter or electrician available to open the access door and secure the mass. |
| 12:00 | Machine 2. If it is a granulator or an extraction fan, the rotor is cleaned first: balancing on top of build-up does not last. | The rotor cleaned before we start, if the build-up is visible to the eye. |
| 15:00 | Machine 3 and, if time allows, baseline measurements on other machines for your records. | A list of the machines you suspect, including those not in the quotation. |
| 17:00 | Wrap-up: before and after figures at the same points and the same running condition, and a conversation with maintenance about what is still open. | Five minutes from whoever decides. |
| 17:30 | Drive back to Gaia. | — |
If the three machines do not fit into the day — and sometimes they do not, because the first one turns out to have a mechanical fault that is not unbalance — staying over and continuing the next day at 140 EUR per diem beats driving 320 km a second time.
What to prepare before we drive the 160 km
Preparation always pays, but at this distance it pays double: a detail that costs half an hour in Porto can cost the whole visit here. This is the list we send to customers in the region before leaving Gaia.
- A window in which the machine can be stopped and started several times in a row — at least three start-ups per rotor. In continuous production such as glass or three-shift injection moulding, tell us which windows genuinely exist before we fix a date.
- Access to the correction plane, the point on the rotor where the mass goes: an inspection door that opens, a removable cover, access to the grinding wheel flange. Send a photo; this is the detail that most often forces the plan to change on site.
- Clean bare metal surfaces at the bearings for the vibration sensors, and a spot on the shaft or pulley for the reflective mark of the phase sensor, with a clear line of sight.
- A 220 V socket near the machine for the laptop and the measurement module.
- A clean rotor. On wood extraction, granulators and glass exhausters, balancing over deposits is work that will not survive the month.
- Fastenings checked: feet, frame, foundation, taper bushes on the pulleys. A soft foot — an imperfect seating of the machine foot on its base — ruins the result more reliably than any calculation error.
- Fitter and welder from your side, included in the price, or ours at +150 EUR per rotor without welding and +400 EUR with welding. Say so in advance: in wood dust areas or explosive atmospheres welding may simply be ruled out, and masses are then bolted into holes provided by the manufacturer.
- Passes, work permits, isolation and cordoning of the area. At quarries and glassworks this takes time, and it has to take that time before we arrive, not afterwards.
- A full list of candidate machines, including the doubtful ones. That list is what decides whether the visit is one day or two.
If you have earlier measurements, even from a simple handheld meter, send them: overall level in mm/s RMS per bearing and, if possible, the 1x component. A trend over months says more about the machine than any absolute table — the limits in ISO 20816 depend on machine type, power and whether the support is rigid or flexible, and the applicable part has to be checked case by case.
How to book the visit
The more you tell us before we leave, the fewer surprises there are on site. Two photos and three numbers are usually enough for us to say whether balancing will help you at all.
There is one more route that makes particular sense 160 km from the base: if you have many rotors and your own maintenance team, buying the instrument can work out cheaper than calling us several times a year. The Balanset-1A costs 1975 EUR + VAT and the OEM version, without the case, 1735 EUR + VAT. The kit includes two vibration sensors, a laser phase sensor, a two-channel USB module and Windows software, and it serves both for work in the machine's own bearings and as the measuring system for a soft-bearing balancing machine. Technical support comes from engineers who do field balancing themselves.
- 01
Describe the machines
Machine type, power or rotor mass, running speed, type of bearings and drive, and the exact address in Leiria, Marinha Grande or nearby. List every candidate machine, not just the noisiest one.
- 02
Add photos and numbers
Photos of the whole machine, of the bearing housings and of the access to the correction plane. If you have measurements, send the overall level and the 1x at each bearing, and say what changed on the machine in the last month: knives, hammers, cleaning, repair.
- 03
Get the quotation with travel already calculated
We send the cost of the work per machine, the exact travel figure based on the route to your address and, where relevant, the per diem for a second day. Then we agree the shutdown window.
- 04
We arrive and work from the measurement
Initial measurement, mechanical checks, trial run, calculation and fitting of the mass, check measurement at the same points and the same running condition. If it turns out the problem is not unbalance, you hear it on site and not in a report a week later.
Phone and WhatsApp: +351 931 831 229. Email: axilinegeral@gmail.com. Instagram: @axiline.pt. Base: Rua das Colectividades 76 R/C ET, 4430-625 Vila Nova de Gaia. NIF 265 623 375. Write on WhatsApp if photos and a short video of the machine running are easier to send: they show more than any description in words.
Frequently asked questions
How much does travel from Gaia to Leiria or Marinha Grande cost?
The rule is the same across the country: the first 20 km from the base are included, and the rest is counted at 0.60 EUR per kilometre, round trip. For Leiria, at about 160 km each way, that comes to roughly 280 chargeable kilometres, so around 170 EUR of travel per visit — the same figure whether we come for one machine or five. The exact amount is calculated from the road route to your address, not from a straight line on the map, and it goes into the quotation before we set off. If the work does not fit into one day, a per diem of 140 EUR per day is added, which is still cheaper than repeating the drive.
Do you have a workshop or an engineer in Marinha Grande?
No. AXILINE has one base, in Vila Nova de Gaia, and works by travelling. There is no office, no store and nobody of ours in Leiria or Marinha Grande, and we say this deliberately: promising a local presence would be false and would change how you plan your maintenance. The practical side is that dates are booked in advance and a second trip is a new journey with new mileage. The good side is that you know exactly where the van comes from and which kilometres you are paying for.
Is it worth calling you out for a single machine?
It can be done and we do it, but it is worth seeing the arithmetic first. One small machine is 300 EUR of vibration diagnostics with a report plus 250 EUR for package S, 550 EUR in total, and that single machine carries the roughly 170 EUR of travel on its own. The minimum invoice per visit is 500 EUR. With three or four rotors in the same day, the road cost splits between them and comes to about 42 EUR per machine. So we always suggest two things: look at every suspect machine in the plant, and ask the company next door whether they have something waiting — travel is charged once per visit, not per customer.
Our production never stops — glass furnace, three-shift injection moulding. How does balancing fit in?
By separating two things. Vibration diagnostics is done with the machine running and forces nothing to stop: we measure, look at the spectrum and tell you what is going on. Balancing is different: it needs a stable running speed and at least three stops and starts per rotor, for the initial run, the run with the test mass and the check run. The furnace itself is not the object of the work; the candidates are the auxiliaries — combustion fans, exhausters, cooling ventilation, blowers, granulators. Tell us which windows genuinely exist, including planned shutdowns, and we build the visit around them. Booking a date without a window is the mistake that most often turns one visit into two.
Can you balance our grinding wheel or the spindle on a machining centre?
The grinding wheel, in most cases yes: it is balanced mounted, through the balancing flange, provided the machine reaches a stable running speed and the correction plane can be reached. It is worth repeating after each dressing. With high-speed spindles the answer is more guarded: many carry the manufacturer's own integrated balancing system and have their own limits on speed and on attaching masses, and in that case our part is measurement and diagnostics rather than correction. Send the make, model, speed and a photo of the set-up and we will tell you honestly what is possible — before driving 160 km, not after.
Related content
Prices: vibration diagnostics and balancing, priced separately
Vibration diagnostics for one machine, with a finding and a written report, costs 300 EUR. If balancing turns out to be feasible, it's added by rotor size: S +250, M +450, L +700, XL from +1200 EUR — a total of 550 to 1500 EUR and up per machine, in one or two planes at no extra charge. If balancing isn't possible — for example because of damaged bearings — you pay only for the diagnostics and travel, and you get a report with the cause of the vibration. The minimum invoice per visit is 500 EUR, and all prices exclude VAT.
Rotor balancing in Porto and Vila Nova de Gaia: based close by, serving the whole country
Yes — Porto and Vila Nova de Gaia are our home region, we work across the whole north of Portugal, and by arranging the schedule we travel to any point in the country. The first 20 km of travel from our base are included in the price, and beyond that it's 0.60 EUR per kilometre, round trip. The minimum invoice per visit is 500 EUR, the minimum time on site is 4 hours, payment is 50% in advance, and all prices are + VAT. We work out the exact amount for your address by route and send it before the visit, so there are no surprises on site. Send us the machine type, running speed, power or rotor mass, and a couple of photos of the unit on WhatsApp +351 931 831 229, and we'll tell you whether balancing will actually help here.
On-site rotor balancing, in the machine's own bearing housings
On-site balancing means the rotor stays in the machine. We fit two accelerometers (vibration sensors) on the bearing housings, aim a laser phase sensor at a reflective marker, take the initial vibration reading, run one or two trials with a weight of known mass, calculate the correction mass and angle, fit the weights and measure again. You get a report with the figures before and after. A typical visit takes a working day; vibration diagnostics with a report costs 300 EUR per unit, balancing adds from 250 EUR, and the minimum invoice per visit is 500 EUR.
Describe your equipment and the problem
We'll answer your questions, clarify the details, and let you know what's needed for an estimate and a visit.