How Could a 200 Horsepower Motor Not Be Worth Repair?

It happens. There are times when our service center must tell a customer that their 200hp motor is just not worth repairing.  Extreme damage from the motor failure may make the motor not economical to repair (NER); however, there are other times when it’s just not a good business decision to repair.

Our goal is to provide our motor owners with a reliable repair that is as good as new, or better in many cases. In this case study, the motor had suffered many previous insulation failures to ground and it absolutely could have been rewound economically.  However, even though the damage was not visible, proper coreloss testing revealed the laminations were shorted. When this occurs, the motor loses performance, efficiency, and will eventually suffer a failure in the stator hot-spot area.

This customer at first didn’t understand why we recommended recycling the motor because they had it repaired by another shop several times.  However, after an inspection review with the customer of the test results and quality concerns, the customer researched the motor history and found that the motor had been rewound not only several times, but also less than 6-months ago.

As Strategic Partner’s in Reliability Performance, it’s D.I.E.’s job to help our customers make good business decisions with their critical motor assets. Decatur Industrial now offers the full range of Toshiba motors and drives and was able to provide the customer a new energy efficiency “drop in” replacement Toshiba motor solution.

Hidden Damage = Poor Reliability!

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