Electrical Drive Motors are an integral part of the Mechanical drive systems. If you neglect their operational maintenance, you’ll run into some potentially expensive and annoying problems. But, if the motors are properly taken care of, you’ll have many years of faithful service from them, with little need for replacement.

Let’s take a look at how to care for your electrical motors. For fan cooled type electrical motors, it’s vital to make sure that the cooling fins are clean and free of built up material at all times. Since these motors are completely enclosed, a build up on the fins will keep heat from leaving the electrical motor, leading to an electrical short and excess of vibration which can damage the bearings.As it’s seen in many drive motors used with Feeders and Screens, spilled material chokes up the cooling fins and motor overheats. Fortunately, it’s relatively easy to keep material from building up on the fins. Plastic shields can be mounted on the electrical motor to keep the spillage from reaching the fins, for instance. That will enable you to keep proper airflow, even if you can’t get rid of the spillage itself.

• Be sure you keep the electrical motors lubricated according to the manufacturer’s recommendations.
• The electrical motors should be bolted down securely to prevent bearing damage from vibration.
• Avoid full load starts of the motor unless it’s impossible to do so, since it can damage a motor in short order.
• Don’t force motor shaft to bend excessively. The rotor suffers extreme stress under such condition and a failure could occur.
• Make sure that motors which drive vibrating mechanisms are vibrating in time with the machine, not against them. Inability to do so, leads to motor and bearings getting damaged prematurely.
• Ensure that the centerlines of motor shaft and driven shaft are parallel to each other. Misalignment of sheaves places a high axial load on the motor bearings and the bearings on the driven component. This also leads to early wear of sheaves and belts.
• Though motor bearings and belts are designed to take radial load, but running them beyond their givenradial load capacity for elongated period of time leads to premature bearing and drive belt failure. As a guideline, keep a small amount of bow on the slack side of the belts when the machine is running. If there’s not a bow on the slack side, then the belts are too tight and should be loosened.

These aren’t the only things you’ll need to do to care for electrical motors, but they’re among the most important. To keep yourself from losing money and having to deal with problematic slowdowns and stoppages, be sure you follow the instructions mentioned in the motor’s maintenance manual and care for your motors effectively. Include the electrical motor maintenance in the weekly to-do’s list.