Following is an our excerpt from our friends at Fluke on the top leading causes of motor failure. This doesn’t just preclude motors but also everything mechanical with a drive chain and bearings.
Motor failure check points
Proper training and the right mindset can prevent the 13 most common causes of winding insulation and bearing failure in advance.
Four strategies for success:
Motor control systems are being utilized in critical processes throughout manufacturing plants.
Equipment failure can result in high monetary losses both from
potential motor, or parts, replacement and from equipment downtime for the
system the motor powers.
Arming maintenance engineers and technicians with the right knowledge, prioritizing workload and managing preventative maintenance to monitor equipment and troubleshoot intermittent, elusive problems can, in some cases, avoid failures due to normal system operating stresses and reduce overall downtime costs.
There are four key strategies that you can undertake to restore or prevent
premature failures in motor drive and rotating component:
- Document operating condition, machine specifications and performance
tolerance ranges. - Capture and document critical measurements at installation, before and after
maintenance and on a routine basis. - Create an archive reference of measurements to facilitate trend analysis and
identify change of state conditions. - Plot individual measurements to establish a baseline trend. Any change in
trend line of more than +/- 10 % to 20 % (or any other % determined, based
on your system performance or criticality) should be investigated to root
cause to understand why the issue is occurring.
Please review the PDF for helpful insight from our friends at Fluke and keep this in mind when you commission your equipment.
Let’s control our downtime!
