A Decatur Industrial customer had been using a 3rd party large vibration company that reviewed the vibration results from a remote location. The customer did not see the value in those reports and were still experiencing reactive emergency maintenance and downtime. The plant contacted Decatur Industrial, who does all their motor repair, to perform vibration analysis condition monitoring.
After Decatur Industrial conducted a vibration analysis, we recommended they remove a 500HP ANEMA motor due to vibration in the bearings. The bearing damage was caused by electrical fluting from a VFD and poor grounding. Our technicians were on site and immediately reported our findings to the reliability engineer and the plant scheduled the replacement during a scheduled outage.
By having our expert technicians on site who understood how the customer’s equipment operated, we were able to isolate this issue in the vibration and pull the motor proactively.
The customer saved $50,000 by avoiding a major catastrophic motor failure and up to $130,000 in unnecessary downtime.