Decatur Industrial has taken the lead in helping the reliability of a regional paper mill and their (DC) preventative maintenance program. As part of our value-added services, we perform a visual inspection of the motors prior to any scheduled plant outage.
Visual inspection is often overlooked as an effective preventative maintenance tool. Our specialists are trained in recognizing signs of deterioration or developing problems through a visual inspection while the motor is in operation.
During inspection, Decatur Industrial, along with the brush manufacturer who supplies the brushes for the DC motors, found an 800 HP DC motor showing major issues on the brush/commutator – it was about to fail and needed to be changed out as soon as possible.
This discovery saved unnecessary production downtime as a proactive scheduled replacement was able to be installed during a routine machine outage. This proactive inspection also prevented a catastrophic run-to-failure, very expensive repair.