A gravel pit in Petersburg, KY contacted John Baumann (Sales) with a problem. They had 2 motors on a dredge. A particular dredge is a floating clam shell type bucket that pulls gravel off the bottom of a lake. The motors drop and pull up the bucket from the bottom of the lake. The team at the gravel pit wanted to upgrade from a wound rotor motor and convert it to a new induction motor to be controlled by a VFD. They also wanted to upgrade the controls to eliminate a diesel generator and go to shore power. If they run 10 hours a day, they would have to provide a thousand gallons of diesel fuel to the generator via a tanker barge every four days. Not only are they going to save a lot on fuel, they are also minimizing their risk of environmental hazards. Two New 350hp Weg Motors were purchased by the customer. Horner’s job was to pull the hoist motors off the unit and replace them with the newly purchased motors. The customer needed this one quickly with a 3 week turnaround. We were able to turn the job in two weeks only to deliver it in 2 weeks two days as they weren’t ready for us. We transported the dredge drum trolley to Washington Street which was not easily fit onto a truck. It was 41,000 lbs and was 8 ft. wide by 17 ft. long. The Machine Shop made 4 – 32”L X 6”W X 3” thick steel bars to raise the new motors center height to fit the frame and resized the coupling hub with sleeves to fit the new motors. Washington Street then installed the motors back onto the dredge drum trolley. We had to laser align the motors to the gearbox. During the customer’s visit, they wanted us to add an encoder to the drum shaft, so Horner Fan/Fab designed and made a bracket and cover for the encoder. The trolley was loaded back on the truck and was delivered and installed at the customer site. The trolley was so large and with all the work in the shop, most of the work on the trolley was performed on the trailer in the loading dock. Thanks to all the Horner employees who turned this job around quickly and did a fantastic job!
