Electric Motor Blog

A centrifugal fan running backwards still moves air. Flow drops, current sits well below nameplate, and nobody notices. In a ventilation plant this can go undetected for months, un... More Details

The real test of a motor warranty comes on the day the failed motor is opened on a rewinder's bench. If one phase of the winding is charred, is that a manufacturing defect, or the ... More Details

A buyer sends the same enquiry to three suppliers: "4 × 15 kW motors, please quote." A week later three prices arrive for three different products: a 2-pole IE3, a 4-pole IE4 and a... More Details

A water utility just across the border orders twelve motors for a new pumping station. They are loaded on time, then sit at the border crossing for three days: the number of packag... More Details

A faded 11 kW motor sits on a dealer's bench at an industrial estate. The seller plugs it in, it spins up quietly, and the asking price is less than half of a new one. Many used-mo... More Details

Three quotes for 40 motors land on the buyer's desk. Supplier A has the lowest unit price, supplier B is slightly higher but includes freight, and supplier C looks the most expensi... More Details

Picture two 22 kW motors in the same plant. One drives a cooling-tower fan and runs summer and winter, easily 6,000 hours a year. The other drives a transfer pump in the warehouse ... More Details

On the capital budget for a new production line, motors often take up a single row: "electric motors, 42 units". As the project moves on, that row grows. Drive-rated motors added l... More Details

A proforma invoice usually arrives with a payment request attached: approve it, pay the advance, and the motor goes into production or onto the truck. That is exactly the moment to... More Details

Two quotations land on the purchasing desk. Both are for a 15 kW, 4-pole, 400 V, foot-mounted motor, yet one costs noticeably more than the other. Purchasing wants to know why they... More Details

Take two 15 kW motors bought together under one purchase order. One runs a pump in a cool, dry water tank plant room at about three-quarters of full load; its bearings have been ch... More Details

The complaints about the rooftop exhaust fan at a city hotel only started after 11 p.m., when the street went quiet. A quick survey showed the fan was driven directly by a 2-pole m... More Details

At a cement plant, a 90 kW spare motor reserved for a critical fan spent three years in a corner of the workshop under a tarpaulin. When the duty motor failed, the spare went in on... More Details

A packaging plant's maintenance plan had one line covering all 140 motors: "grease every three months, megger once a year". It looked tidy on paper and caused two problems on the f... More Details

A municipal pumping station lost the motor on its vertical pump. With the station down, someone took a horizontal flanged motor off the shelf, stood it shaft-down on the pump and h... More Details