Project Type: 

Repair & Service

Customer:

Dairy Producer

Background: 

A local Dairy Producer contacted JJ Loughran to inform us that one of their critical dryer motors had failed on site. The motor in question had been installed and functional for over ten years with no previous issues. The original unit was an HXR400 ABB 355KW 2 Pole 400VAC with an increased 400 Frame (a motor of this size is usually in a 355 Frame). Our staff did an initial site inspection before helping our customer’s onsite engineers electrically and mechanically disconnect the motor, removing the unit and transporting it to our engineering workshop.

The Solution: 

• JJ Loughran engineers carried out a detailed mechanical and electrical inspection of the ABB Motor in-house before it was disassembled; the winding integrity was also checked with our SKF Baker Static Motor Analyser (see above results). The motor failed the resistance test and when dismantled there was significant damage caused to the bar wound stator.
• We found that the motor had catastrophic mechanical damage due to a number of factors, informing the customer that the unit was beyond economical repair.
• As JJ Loughran is an ABB Approved Service Provider, we checked with ABB’s large machine factory in Finland, a new motor was on a 13 week lead time as it was such a unique build. The motor had specialized insulated oil lubricated bearings along with a pulse encoder.
• As this was such a critical application our customer could not afford it to be out of service for such a long period of time.
• JJ Loughran have arguably the largest stock of electric motor in the UK or Ireland, thus we had a 355KW 2 Pole in a 355 frame in stock. We proposed lending this to our customer FOC (free of charge) until a new ABB motor was delivered.
• The motor we had in stock (although electrically the same as the ABB motor) was physically different. Our engineering team had to machine a plinth from heavy sheet steel 45mm deep to aligned motor and dryer shaft. We also had to make a sleeve to increase the shaft size from 75mm to 80mm to suit the originally pulley.
• Our engineers installed an insulated bearing to the temporary motor as the unit was supplied by an ABB 800 Drive onsite. To allow for motor terminations we also retrofitted the original ABB motor terminal box onto the temporay motor.
• JJ Loughran delivered the motor to site and mechanically and electrically installed the unit. We had to supply and fit new SWA Power cabling between the VSD and temporary motor.
• We also had to laser align the motor to dryer fan with our SKF TKSA 41 shaft alignment tool. This is an advanced laser solution for achieving extremely accurate shaft alignments.
• Working in conjunction with an OEM engineer and our own VSD engineer we amended ABB 800 VSD parameters and fitted a thermistor relay inside the VSD cabinet for the temporary motor.
• Our mechanical engineers fabricated and installed a new rotating guard to ensure safety was not compromised.
• The Temporary motor was then tested and the dryer left fully operational, minimizing our customer downtime. Our customer sent us a thankyou e-mail for finding a quick solution.

JJ Loughran

“We ran Stork 2 in full production last night for a sustained period and everything went very well. Thank you very much for your help in getting the temporary solution sorted.” – Engineering Manager