Archives for January 2022

Meet Steven Leinard – Manager of Quality and Engineering

Decatur Industrial is pleased to announce that Steven Leinard has the joined the team as the Manager of Quality and Engineering. This is an integral role in serving out our promise of exceptional service and quality to customers.

This position is a natural fit for Leinard, coming to Decatur Industrial with a background in management in regulated industries such as pharmaceutical, bulk foods, bulk ingredients, and the US Navy.

“We have an established quality system that I am looking forward to overseeing and improving upon,” said Leinard. “Consistently working to improve our operations and processes is something I am very passionate about.”

Think Transformers.

The rotor of an AC Induction motor is like the secondary circuit of a transformer. It is easy to imagine that any change to the number of turns in the secondary of a transformer, would certainly affect the circuit performance of the transformers primary windings. Well, the rotor bars of the induction motor could be compared to the winding turns in the secondary of a transformer. Changing the conductivity or resistance in any way on the rotor cage of an induction motor would be like modifying the number of turns on a transformer secondary. So, if we consider the induction motor rotor cage as a comparison to a transformer secondary, then what part of the induction motor would be compared to the transformer primary? You guessed it… the stator windings. Any resistance change to the rotor cage of an induction motor will impact the circuit characteristics (inductance) of the stator windings. Therefore, monitoring the stator winding inductance of an induction motor is a great method of trending the condition of the rotor cage.

Credit: PdMA

New Year Motor Reliability Tip

It’s the beginning of a new year and time to remind ourselves of the need for an annual review of our alarm setpoints. We should annually review the setpoints to make sure they are not too conservative resulting in nuisance alarms, or too liberal resulting in missed indications leading to unexpected failures. Electric motor windings and insulation technology does change so it is critical to check in with your equipment vendors during this review to identify any default setpoint changes they recommend and to learn of any new tests or alarms that have been added through software updates. Be careful not to allow a more conservative setpoint established by your equipment vendor to overwrite a local setpoint developed from experience with onsite analytics and historical knowledge. Pay close attention to any application or system changes that would demand a new baseline for alarm setpoint establishment and learning.

Many alarms are based on a comparison to baseline so once the baseline is completed it is important to establish these alarm setpoints. Although your equipment vendors should be keeping you abreast of industry standard changes, it is a good idea to check in with the high profile standards for any changes affecting your industry. For the electrical reliability industry IEEE, EASA, and NEMA are examples of high profile industry standards that your electrical reliability team should be aware of.

Decatur Industrial Electric Announces Addition to Customer Reliability Team

Decatur Industrial Electric is pleased to announce Chad Stohler has joined the company as a Reliability Specialist. Stohler is an accomplished account manager working his entire career within the B2B sector, most recently focusing on hydraulics and engineered solutions.

A native of Indiana and an Indiana University graduate, Stohler will be servicing current and prospective customers in Indiana as well as Ohio and Kentucky.

“Chad is an industry veteran with a wealth of knowledge in his territory, particularly the Indiana area” said Rich Brunner, Director of Strategic Accounts. “I know he will be able to make an immediate impact with customers in providing reliability-based solutions.”

Do you know what equipment is in your plant?

Making time for a motor survey and spares audit.

You know your plant and criticality of equipment & we know motors!

Do you know what equipment you have in your plant? The unfortunate truth is that if you are like many others, you don’t!

Decatur Industrial recently helped a customer perform an equipment survey so they understand exactly what they have on hand, especially as it relates to critical equipment.

Our reliability specialist worked with the customer team to survey motors in the plant line by line. We created a list of motors and equipment plus outlined which critical ones need to have spares stocked and ready to go. This list is updated and visible to the customer and Decatur Industrial at all times.

By capturing this data, we can help ensure the customer has immediate access to critical equipment and prevent unnecessary downtime, which can cost up to $25,000 an hour.