Motor Reliability Commitment for the New Year
January offers a fresh start for a new year of commitments and why not commit to a year of best practices for your motor reliability. All of the January tips will focus on best practice topics related to your electric motors, starting with Reliability.
From industry expert Ramesh Gulati’s book Maintenance Best Practices the following are some quantitative numbers to compare to your facilities performance as a benchmark for reliability best practices:
- Planned maintenance should be greater than 85% of maintenance.
- Unscheduled (reactive) maintenance should be less than 10%.
- Preventive maintenance (PM) should be conducted within +/- 10% of schedule to be in compliance.
- Each hour of PM or condition based maintenance (CBM) should yield .5 to 2 hours of corrective maintenance (PM effectiveness, PM yield).
To purchase a copy of Ramesh Gulati’s book go to:
The Five Whys of Equipment Failure
The five whys refers to the practice of asking five times why a motor failure occurred in order to get closer to the root cause of the problem. Failure to determine the root cause can result in treating the symptoms of the problem instead of its cause, in which case you will continue to have the same problems over and over again.
- Why did the motor fail? It shorted to ground.
- Why did it short to ground? The ground wall insulation failed.
- Why did the ground wall insulation fail? The insulation overheated.
- Why did the insulation overheat? Excessive ambient temperature.
- Why was the ambient temperature so high? The cooling fan motor was not operating correctly.
Just replacing the motor would not solve the cooling fan problem and the new motor would be in the same high risk environment.
Keeping the Metals Industry Running Strong
Check our our new brochure created for the Metals Industry. At Decatur Industrial Electric, we know your industry is demanding; making it important to have a partner that understands those demands. With expertise in large DC motors, remanufacturing solutions, field maintenance services, and special production equipment we can work to reduce your Total Cost of Ownership.
Electric Motors in Bicycles
Cheating in the sport of cycling has reached a “mind-blowing” new level, says 60 Minutes’ Bill Whitaker. There’s evidence that some professional riders are using bikes rigged with small, secret motors during races, a practice known in Europe as “motor-doping.
Whitaker and a team of 60 Minutes producers went to Budapest to meet Istvan Varjas, the engineer who says he invented the tiny bike motor, which he says has been used surreptitiously in the Tour de France.
The motor can be activated in several different ways: The rider can activate a secret switch on the handlebars, a partner can activate the system by wireless remote, or a heart-rate monitor worn by the rider can be programmed to automatically activate the motor when the rider’s heart rate rises to a certain level.