On the way to good as new
This 750 HP GE motor's home is a nasty, hot industrial environment where no one wants to do maintenance. (It is possible to create a preventive maintenance mindset in even the toughest plant locations—check out this guide for some tips.) As a result, the 60+ year-old motor doesn't always receive the tender loving care it deserves, even though it's a critical spare. Now it's in Duke's shop.
We've seen this motor before. Last time we had to repair the insulation on the leads and splice old and new leads together. To us, that's fun.
This motor and Duke go way back. This time, she arrived in the Duke Electric shop in really rough shape following a flash and fire that melted many of the motor's key components. The issue was brush maintenance. Left untended, eventually the brushes wore down and came in contact with the shunt leads. Spark. Boom. Call Duke.
We've cleaned up the melted mess, replaced shunt leads and brushes and given the motor a shiny new paint job. But the work isn't done. We're waiting to find out if we can source OEM parts from GE to complete the repair. If we can't, we'll fabricate our own to get this old girl back on her feet.
