Before Decatur Industrial got involved, this large grain processing company had suffered two bearing failures in less than two years. They called us in to fix their 450HP motor, which was driving a large fan in their feedhouse, and they told us the story of their repeat catastrophic failures. They wanted to know why it kept happening!

Diagnosing the problem:  When we arrived on scene the motor was still in place running and our reliability specialist could hear bearing fluting as the motor had an audible howl to it.  With our SKF Arc meter and vibration analysis we verified the existence of electric current at both motor bearings and also at both driven fan bearings. Once the motor was able to be brought to our service center, we verified the bearings were indeed suffering from classic bearing fluting. Current discharge from voltage passing through the bearings as long been associated with large electric motors; however, the increased use of variable frequency drives (VFDs) has since resulted in shaft voltages in small low voltage machines.

The fix:  We insulated the ODE bearing housing and installed an AEGIS grounding ring – this motor has now been in place and running for four years with no subsequent bearing failures.  It operates noise free and vibration readings show no bearing issues. The customer has saved approximately $80,000 in repair costs over what they had been spending in repairs – plus no more downtime due to motor issues.

“It’s Always the Motors Fault” : Decatur Industrial Breaks Down the Myth

We’ve seen it before – a plant experiences repeated motor failures and calls in a motor shop to fix the motor. The only issue is sometimes the problem lies elsewhere.

Your average motor shop will repair the motor and send it back into the plant. The problem with that scenario is the root cause of the failure is never identified which means continued downtime and high repair costs for the plant.  As a Strategic Partner in Reliability Solutions for our Customers, Decatur Industrial goes beyond repairing the motor and completes a 360 degree root cause failure analysis.

This type of strategic approach allowed us to help a large coal-fired generating plant that had been experiencing repeated drive motor failures. Decatur Industrial worked collaboratively with Customer Engineering to identify the contributing factors of the premature failures and short life-span of the drive motors with the goal of eliminating emergency downtime and catastrophic equipment failures.

Findings disclosed structural looseness in the foundation and hardware that secured the motors and blowers. This looseness contributed to misalignment and excessive vibration levels – both of which reduce life-span of motors and drive components.  These findings allowed the customer to take corrective actions and implement predictive maintenance and reliability practices.

These findings amounted to hard cost savings as the customer had been spending $140,000 annually on repairs of motors and blowers due to failures that had nothing to do with the motor integrity.

A Decatur Industrial customer had been using a 3^rd 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.

Customer:  An Industry Leading Chemical Company

The Situation:  This Customer bought two, 1500 HP compressors and the existing space that these two units were supposed to go into would not fit with the existing location of the motor junction box.  The motor and compressor were built and shipped on one skid plate.

The Work: Decatur Industrial reviewed the location of where the junction box currently existed to determine where the Customer would want it relocated on the skid. Safety was the driving force in determining a solution. It needed to be safely accessed by maintenance and use material that would be maintenance friendly as well.

The Solution: Decatur Industrial extended the leads on the motor and used flexible conduit to relocate the leads from the motor box to the back of the skid where the junction box had been moved. Using maintenance friendly materials, we fabricated a stand for the junction box and reconnected the leads to this location.

Cost Savings:  Without this result, the other choices would have been to replace the motor entirely or completely rewind it to relocate the leads. This saved the Customer approximately $200,000.