Motor Bearing Cage Failure
A noisy motor was analyzed using Acoem Falcon and Connection Technology Center accelerometer. The analysis revealed a cage failure, prompting the customer to shut down the line, and the motor was later dismantled, confirming the failure.
First thing this morning was an interesting one.
We were called out to a 'noisy motor' from a customer, as a one off analysis (site does not have routine monitoring with us on these units). Got my trusty Acoem Falcon out, paired with my high response Connection Technology Centeraccelerometer.
It's not often you get to catch a cage failure before it collapses, so I thought I'd share some data from quite a severe one that held on for it's life.
Note the near perfect alignment of the primary peak to FTF / cage frequency in the enveloping spectrum, then the 'humped' noise floor under the BPFO frequencies and its harmonics travelling through the envelope.
The waveform modulation delta showed nearly exact to the cage frequency also.
The customer was told of the analysis immediately and made the decision to keep the line down.
This motor was dismantled a few hours later by Central Group (UK), where the cage was found with a split as pictured. Thank you for the follow-up images!
Additional Images
