25 Apr 2023

Motor Repair Completed Within 24 Hours

Neutronic Technologies recently supported a food manufacturer with the repair of a large 355KW motor. Scheduling the repair to eliminate production downtime, it was essential Neutronic cooperated with the customer to turn around the motor repair within 24 hours.

The customer’s reliability engineers completed a vibration analysis of the motor, which identified that the rotor was severely out of balance. The imbalance was causing considerable levels of vibration, which, if left unchecked, could have resulted in a catastrophic breakdown. It was discovered that the vibration issues had caused a hairline crack through the drive end bearing housing, and Neutronic was able to have a brand-new housing manufactured overnight.

A complete overhaul of the motor, including the supply and fitting of new insulated bearings, steaming and stoving of the stator, was carried out. Finally, the rotor was balanced to quality grade G2, using its in-house balancing machine.

The repair was planned during a scheduled shutdown period. This allowed the repair to be completed without the customer losing any production time. If the balancing issue had been left unchecked, this would have resulted in further damage to the motor, eventually causing a breakdown and unplanned downtime. A replacement motor would cost around £20K – repairing the motor minimised financial costs for the business.