Motor testing
Motors are an essential part of most manufacturing facilities, and contamination, corona, thermal cycling and moisture ingress can initiate faults that develop and cause unplanned and costly downtime.
Studies have shown - such as the report on Reliability Centered Maintenance, by Nowlan and Heap - that most problems occur early on in a motor's life or at random intervals. They don't, as is often thought, correlate with the motor's age.
A motor that has been rewound, for example, could have an unbalanced resistance, if the repair company used a different size wire during the winding process. It is therefore important to check motors that have just been repaired to ensure that they can be relied upon again.
Equipment is now available to improve the reliability and performance of your motor systems. Using these portable instruments, we can check motors prior to installation, as well as motors currently in-service and motors that have just been repaired.
In a healthy 3-phase motor, all of the winding measurements should be balanced. By using Motor Circuit Analysis technology, we can detect turn, coil and cable faults, broken rotor bars, casting voids, phase and ground faults, and rotor eccentricity.
Virtually any type or size of AC or DC motor can be checked for immediate, on-the-spot condition assessment, including distribution and transmission transformers.
A thorough testing programme should also be complimented by a number of proactive maintenance measures. For example, motors should generally be stored and run in dry, dust-free and temperature-controlled environments, and the shafts on spare motors should be turned periodically to prevent the seals from seizing up.
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Please contact us with questions,
or for more information |
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