Archives for 2017

Annual Decatur Industrial Electric Reliability Summit

Customers from across the Midwest joined us today for our annual Reliability Summit. TECO-Westinghouse presented an electrical class on Above NEMA motors and Falk/Rexnord presented a mechanical class on gearbox fundamentals.

TECO-Westinghouse reviewed repair considerations, new and/or retrofit options, factory repair and part support, reliability and maintenance checks, and more.

Falk Rexnord reviewed gearing and drives, sizing and selection, bearing basics, reliability packages and options, and more.

While this Summit is only offered once a year, Decatur Industrial holds a variety of training classes throughout the yeear. We also do trainings on site at customer locations.

Employee Spotlight: Meet Brian Pace

This month we are spotlighting Brian Pace, mechanical technician, who has been with us for three years. Brian works in our service center on pumps, gearboxes, and other mechanical solutions. Brian has decades of experience in this industry, previously working at Flowserve. He studied welding at the College of DuPage and completed the Falk School training. In his free time, Brian enjoys fishing for largemouth bass and carp. He is married to Sydney, his wife of 32 years, and has three children.

Motor Tripping?

Motor Tripping

After installing a new motor you are experiencing what some call nuisance trips. Are they nuisance trips or is the motor trying to tell you something is really wrong? New doesn’t always mean good. The first thing to do is look for a NEMA Code Letter on the nameplate. This letter will help you calculate the design locked rotor or In-Rush current the motor is supposed to see. Then use the MCEMAX^® 6-channel In-Rush/Start-Up test to see the actual In-Rush current. If the actual current is not exceeding the design current, then you would want to focus your troubleshooting on the trip relay settings.

For details on calculating the locked rotor current from the NEMA Code letter, visit the PdMA website at:

http://www.pdma.com/pdfs/tips/2011/2_21_11.pdf

Reliability Tip: On-Site Electrical Testing

There are various technologies that can test a motor while running, including:

Vibration
Infrared
Ultra sound (UT)
PdMA On-line, MCE EP1000/EXP4000
Dranetz – On-line continuous motor

Curious on how often you should test?
On-line testing with motor relays is a continuous 24/7 device.
Off-line testing frequency will depend on the atmosphere the equipment is in. It can be done more often if tracking a deterioration situation.

Air conditioning -1 X a year
Typical seasonal conditions (humid in summer/dry in winter) – 2 X a year

How do we know when the stator is going to fail? To find out what is going on with the stator, Decatur Industrial offers offline condition monitoring which does resistance to ground, phase to phase resistance, and polarization index.

Brett Kunzman Promoted to Tech Services Manager

Brett Kunzman will start his new role tomorrow, March 1, 2017, but he is not new to Decatur Industrial. He has been with us for 19 years. A Decatur native, Brett started with us shortly after his high school graduation, where he also attended vocational school and got outside experience working in production and maintenance.

Brett has worked in various areas for the company, including machining, disassembly and assembly, and field service and technical maintenance.

He has completed numerous trainings and holds various certifications:

-Richland Community College: Manufacturing Processing & Machining
-Flender Gear Box Service Training
-R&M Materials Handling, Inc. SX,SM2000 & LM Service Training for Crane and Hoist
-OSHA 10-Hour
-MSHA 40 Hour Part 48A & 48B Certification of Training
-Mobius Institute Vibration Analysis & Dynamic Balancing/Vibration Analyst Certification
-Bearing Failure Analysis (SKF) and (FAG)
-Jim Griffin Precision Laser Alignment

Brett looks forward to continuing our service excellence tradition. Click here to connect with him on LinkedIn.