Everyone is well aware of the quality of Japanese autos in today’s market. In the 1980’s, the Japanese raised the quality bar in the automotive industry, resulting in cars that were of a higher quality and remained in service for many more miles than most of the domestic autos of that time. This off-shore challenge resulted in the upgrade of quality for all American automakers, just to remain in business. This quality concept also applies to the motor repair business and is why our company has Quality Manager like Vernon Pratt, to help us keep quality at the forefront of our business allowing us the opportunity to remain competitive in the marketplace.
Recently, the Springfield repair shop received a 300 KW DC motor from a Japanese parts supplier company, for a Japanese automaker. This motor is used to drive a large stamping press to make their car parts, such as fenders and other body components. The motor was manufactured in Japan by Toyo-Denki and it experienced an armature failure (the rotating winding of the motor). The failure was specifically due to the poor design of the commutator. The riser was an open design with insufficient open riser conductors, resulting in premature failure.
Horner’s sales representative, Karl Hoppe, invited the customer to inspect the failure and discuss repair options. The engineering manager and a staff engineer paid us a visit and we discussed a redesign option to a solid riser vs. the open design. We showed them several examples of a solid riser and discussed longevity as being the end goal. The customer decided to go for a redesigned commutator with a closed riser. Other upgrades included class H slot liners with fused Kapton insulation on the coils and an epoxy treatment on the windings to ensure coil stability. In layman terms, we upgraded the armature winding to a mill motor specification for longer service life.
One could conclude that in this case, we turned the tables on the Japanese, by building a better mousetrap. Thank you to all who contributed to this project.
