Category Archives: Electric Motor Preventive Maintenance

We’ve discussed the causes of unbalance that creates the need for dynamic field balancing services in another blog post, but we have not really covered the tangible benefits of equipment that has received this service. The first thing to keep in mind is unbalance in any rotating machinery, but particularly in an electric motor, is the most common cause of failure. This can even happen if repairs have been made, such as parts being replaced that became defective due to imbalance issues. Imbalance issues create excess vibration and if you fail to address the root cause of that vibration with

Rebuilding an electric motor can be a difficult, labor intensive process. The first step to rebuild an electric motor is cleaning it thoroughly. You need to remove all dirt, grease, paint, insulation, varnish and epoxy that encases the motor. The copper wire coil must be clean and exposed. There are several ways to do this. The most common being doing it by hand by scraping, sanding and removing the debris using chemical solvents and strippers. This can damage the parts. Another–less damaging–method, is to use an ultrasonic cleaner. This is less invasive and often does the job quite wel

An automatic capacitor reformer is an essential tool for any industrial electric motor asset management program. It allows a user to determine how much calculated capacitance of an electrolytic capacitor bank has remaining. The reason that this is important is that as an electrolytic capacitor ages, it loses its maximum capacitance and drops way below the original specs. As a result, it is important to know exactly how much capacitance remains in a capacitor to determine if it needs to be replaced to avoid failure when the power is needed or avoid replacing capacitors before it is absolutely n

The proper care and operation of electric motors depend on how well you protect your motor bearings from poor lubrication and excess vibration. Here are a few of the ways you can keep your bearings in tip top shape and prevent unplanned downtime due to bearing failure as a result of these two problems. Maintain Proper Lubrication for Your Bearings Lack of lubrication is the number one cause for bearing damage and failure. This can be caused by a number of different reasons. The first being that you failed to provide adequate lubrication in the first place, used the wrong kind of lubricant

Because bearings are some of the most important components within an electric motor, and a component that is at risk for failure, it is important to protect your bearings from a need for electric motor service. How do you do this? Here are three tips to consider: 1 - Maintain Optimal Loads Obviously if you run your motor bearings beyond the recommended maximum load, you will eventually damage them. Either from the heat, or the lack of proper lubrication, the bearings will break down. But bearings also need to have a minimal load as well in order to make sure that the rolling elements rotate