Dye house splashes out on motor repair

By Steve Ormondroyd, Workshop Manager

This is the curious story of how we repaired an electric motor that ran on water. The motor, top left, from which water is pouring, was located in a pit under a machine in a dye house and hadn’t run for years. 

The customer wanted to start using the machine again, so the motor was switched on and ran for around half an hour. The stop button was only pressed when someone reported water splashing out of the terminal box.

It turns out the motor had been flooded at some stage and nobody had noticed. How the windings didn’t blow amazed me.

When tested, the windings were in excellent condition, passing all our electrical tests as if the motor had just come out of the factory. We also balanced the rotor, fitted new bearings and ran a final test before giving the motor a fresh coat of paint and returning it to the customer.

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