Industry Case Studies - Decatur Industrial Electric

The following are case studies proving total cost of ownership savings for Decatur Industrial Customers in a variety of industries.

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.

Manpower Challenges? Decatur Industrial Has the Solution.

Not surprisingly, the Covid-19 pandemic is still affecting labor force participation and unemployment among American workers 18 months after its onset. Today’s labor shortage remains a major issue for our customers today, as well as ensuring they have the coverage needed to run their facility if employees are quarantined.

One of those customers found themselves lacking primarily in skilled millwrights. Knowing that it takes a lot of time to find that kind of talent, they turned to Decatur Industrial to fill the gaps. This facility required a planned daily outage once a week. However, they had been consistently short on manpower to accomplish the job. As a partner to this customer, we offered our millwright services so they could meet their plant performance goal. These services started at the height of the pandemic and continue to this very day.

To date, we have logged over 40, 40- hour weeks of millwright work at the customer site. Our team enjoys knowing that our efforts have helped enabled the plant to hit production numbers.

Decatur Industrial has the talent on our team to help customers keep on schedule with items they don’t have the manpower to achieve. Contact us today to see how we can help.

How a DC to AC Retrofit Saved this Customer Money and Time

Converting from DC to AC brings many benefits. This customer understood that the total cost of a new AC motor and new VFD was less than the cost for a typical DC motor rebuild. That alone was a driving force in their decision. However, that’s just ONE of the benefits in this case study.

LESS EQUIPMENT
1. The AC motor does not require a tachometer for speed control in this application so there is a reduction in cost and one less major component leading to greater reliability.
LESS MAINTENANCE
1. The maintenance on the new AC motor and Drive is fraction of the DC Motor and DC Drive, a reduction of 85% to 90% less maintenance.
GREATER RELIABILITY
1. The AC motor will have far greater meantime between failure (MTBF) due to reduced components, circuits/windings, and wear/consumable components.
BETTER SAFETY
1. We were able to design the motor as vertical, so it has proper lifting provisions to stabilize the machine during install. This greatly aids safety for the technicians.
INCREASED MOBILITY
1. The AC motor weighs less than 60% of the DC motor so it is much easier to maneuver.

Click on photos to enlarge.

RCFA: A Key Element to Improved Reliability

A Decatur Industrial customer had back-to-back motor failures on a 300HP boiler fan. This was a critical application and the failures greatly impacted plant production.

Issues often occurred during startup from maintenance outages while the fan was being energized or a short time later when the unit had reached speed.

We needed to do two things: On-site evaluation + motor disassembly and RCFA in shop.

The motor was found to have failed due to moisture condensing on the windings. When the units were offline for maintenance, they failed to have the proper accessories to prevent moisture. D.I.E. installed silicone space heaters on the winding.

On-site inspection found a steam leak in an adjacent area that vented into the room where the motor was sitting idle during the outages. The customer needed to the change the venting to send the energy outside the building for the steam to be released.

Lastly, we reviewed the motor for opportunities to improve performance. The OEM winding design was not optimal as it produced high voltage stresses within the stator. D.I.E. redesigned the winding for better performance and increased reliability. The new winding has:

50% less voltage, at 77 volts per coil
300% more phase-to-phase and coil-to-coil insulation
Air gap harmonics mitigation
Optimum Chord factor where each turn produces higher torque
10% increase in the circular-mil-per-ampere area of wire allowing the motor to operate cooler under the same load due to reduced copper losses

In this case study, RCFA was necessary in-shop as well as at the customer site to identify and isolate issues. The savings in motor repair or replacement cost alone is significant.

Rewound/Repaired Motor $15,000
Replacement Motor $25,500

Redesign a Motor to Increase HP VS Purchasing New

$80,000 saving PLUS no emergency production downtime!

A food packaging plant was experiencing ongoing motor failures due to starting amperage kicking out the main compressor motor. Each time the kickout happened, production on the line would be damaged and lost. Not only was the motor kicking out, but significant motor damage was occurring causing frequent rebuilds and rewinds.

It was determined that the amperage being produced by the starter was going beyond the service factor of the 450HP motor and the compressor OEM believed a 500HP motor was needed.

Instead of selling the packaging plant three new motors, the experts at D.I.E determined that the original motors could easily be rewound by our technicians to convert the 450 HP motor to 500 HP and provide the increased horsepower needed to safely operate the applications. It would also mean the customer would not have to perform expensive equipment modifications.

The redesigned motors, with the D.I.EndurLast Global Vacuum Pressure Impregnation system, are operating very well and D.I.E. saved the customer $80,000+ downtime!

Click on images to enlarge.