A good customer who manufacturers stainless steel had a power outage recently. When power was restored, the motor failed due to condensation from the unheated building. This motor was built by the Army Corp of Engineers in 1937 and came out of a boat from WWII. Field Service came onsite to inspect the motor and found that the fields were grounded and the armature was not far behind. Luckily, this customer had a spare in their warehouse. They decided it was the quickest to take that spare motor out and send it to Horner to repair and get it running.
Due to the time spent in an uncontrolled environment, as well as age (85 years old) this motor has extremely low insulation resistance. The motor was sent to Horner’s 1521 Motor Shop for evaluation and testing to determine the best plan of action to put the customer’s mill back online. Because of the dry rot of the insulation in the field frame and armature, it was agreed that Horner would not clean any electrical parts. We tested all of the coils in the armature and field frame and found them all to be satisfactory; however, the customer would have to live with the fact that the insulation resistance will be low and the only way to improve it would be rewinding the entire machine. A full rewind would have taken anywhere from 8-12 months (and a whole lot of money…)
In addition to the electrical testing of the whole unit and repairs of the armature, Horner also will recondition the brush holders. Field Service is removing the old motor and will install this one when finished.
