100 years on, quality is still the hallmark of our work

By Steve Ormondroyd, Workshop Manager

January 2021 marks the start of the centenary year of Westin Drives, a company where quality has long been the hallmark of our work.

Take an electric motor repair. Where some repairers are content to slap on new bearings and send it on its way, we go the extra mile. For example, we have the best diagnostic and test equipment for motors – plus excellent balancing equipment and capacity.

Consider the attached pictures, above, of two bearing housings from the same motor. If the drive end bearing housing is examined closely, punch marks can be seen at 90° around the housing. They were made by a motor 'repairer' in Yorkshire.

The idea is by centre punching the housing, the resulting burr will stop the bearing moving in the housing. But this faulty technique will almost certainly put the rotor out of alignment, leading to premature bearing failure. When our engineers repair a bearing housing, it is bored, sleeved and machined to the correct tolerance according to SKF. 

This motor came to us because of a bearing failure. Considering the previous attempt at a repair, that was inevitable – particularly as the rated speed for this type of motor is 10980 RPM. 

We have now bored and bushed the housings, balanced the rotor, fitted the correct bearings and returned it to the customer. The correctly machined housings may be seen below.

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