Motor re-connect. Simple eh?

Join Date
May 2010
Location
London
Posts
689
I was asked to disconnect and later reconnect a motor but told the customer it would be 4 hours before I could get there as I was on a job.
They didn't like that I wasn't hung up behind the door ready to pounce and said they would do it themselves.

A few days later I was asked to attend same motor as it had seemingly burned out.

It had.

They assured me it went back wire for wire and they even took a photograph and printed it to make sure.

On inspection amid the acrid burned winding smell, I could see by looking at the photograph and the wires, they had indeed put them back in the correct order.

But.... when disconnecting, they had loosened both nuts on each pillar.
And when reconnecting they had tightened the top nut onto the bottom nut.
firmly securing the connecting lugs but leaving the motor winding wire lugs loose.

This cost them a new motor.

So as the title says - reconnecting a motor is childsplay eh.
 
How many times have you seen maintenance staff replace a motor and not looked if the new one is in star or delta or if it is the right voltage and to top it all didn't check if it runs the right way. A good one was an engineer replaced an agitator motor on a sauce Vacuum cooling plant and a couple of hours later had to dig out korma ice cream from the vessel due to the shape of the blades it did not agitate it and froze it.
 
I tell ya parky, motors are treat with disregard by none electrical people.
Why call a sparky, it's only 3 wires.
That is all they think you do.
They don't notice that you have checked the overload setting. Done a voltage check at the panel and the motor. Ascertained it is free running and tonged it while running on load etc.
 
I was asked to disconnect and later reconnect a motor but told the customer it would be 4 hours before I could get there as I was on a job.
They didn't like that I wasn't hung up behind the door ready to pounce and said they would do it themselves.

A few days later I was asked to attend same motor as it had seemingly burned out.

It had.

They assured me it went back wire for wire and they even took a photograph and printed it to make sure.

On inspection amid the acrid burned winding smell, I could see by looking at the photograph and the wires, they had indeed put them back in the correct order.

But.... when disconnecting, they had loosened both nuts on each pillar.
And when reconnecting they had tightened the top nut onto the bottom nut.
firmly securing the connecting lugs but leaving the motor winding wire lugs loose.

This cost them a new motor.

So as the title says - reconnecting a motor is childsplay eh.

That's not what I heard! They told me that you told them that it was a simple job, it would take only few minutes to do ... etc
 

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