Motors and Foreign Materials

Aug. 19, 2014
Make sure the plant engineer understands how dirt is affecting the equipment.

Your scheduled PM for the main drive motor for the palletizer system includes a current draw measurement. It’s within spec, but very near the high limit. So you ask production about scheduling downtime to address this. Because a critical run is scheduled for tomorrow, production wants repairs done today.

Insulation resistance testing on the windings provides results almost identical to those obtained six months ago. Laser alignment shows the motor was slightly out of alignment, so you fix that.

You also change the dirty filter on the motor’s filtered supply air duct. When you regreased the motor, you found that the old grease was a much darker color than the new grease. You verified that the discoloration is due to contamination, not a change of grease in the supply room.

You run the motor, and now the current measurement is no longer close to the high limit. Your part of the repair is complete, but the repair itself isn’t; make sure the plant engineer understands how dirt is affecting the equipment.

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