NEWS CENTER

Bearings for electric motors

2017-06-08

The bearing is one of the main components of any electric motor, because it is through it that the rotor shaft presses on the housing and transmits loads to it.They must be of the right size, type and design to ensure the highest possible efficiency by minimizing friction losses.

It may seem to the inexperienced worker that if a bearing fails, there is no serious problem and no repair or maintenance is needed, because the damage is not so critical. Why waste money on repairs in such a case?

This may be true for low-powered engines. But for any engine it is fair to say that it is better to immediately install good bearings of the most suitable type and, if possible, of sufficiently high quality, which can withstand all operating loads under normal operating conditions for a given engine.

What to say about big, powerful engines, where even a minor failure in the bearing can cause a snowball effect of a number of problems and malfunctions in the associated equipment. This can lead to process failures and economically damaging downtimes of complex and expensive machines.

Therefore, it is critical and necessary to use reliable bearings of high quality, easy to install and dismantle, and extremely desirable - with the possibility of condition monitoring and easy maintenance in powerful electric motors.

Suppose there is an electric motor operating in a direct-drive system via a coupling. The gear configuration here is longitudinal, so the radial load on the bearing and through the bearing on the motor housing is not so great, since the motor-driven system has its own support.

But what if the decision is made to reinstall this motor on belt-driven equipment when a pulley is mounted on the motor shaft? In that case, the radial loads on the bearings would increase significantly, and bearings not designed for such a load could easily fail under such conditions. The system will not be able to operate normally and steadily.