Ramblings and Such From Hunting Coyote

Westinghouse still has a motor shop don't they ? I've worked on a lot of their marine turbines and generators but not on their motors . 40 years ago we sent a hoist motor in to them and had it back in a couple of weeks , It was a D C motor so it had speed control for raising and lowering the skip and muck buckets in an underground mine shaft we were digging when I worked underground construction . Good luck with getting it up and running soon .
 
Westinghouse still has a motor shop don't they ? I've worked on a lot of their marine turbines and generators but not on their motors . 40 years ago we sent a hoist motor in to them and had it back in a couple of weeks , It was a D C motor so it had speed control for raising and lowering the skip and muck buckets in an underground mine shaft we were digging when I worked underground construction . Good luck with getting it up and running soon .
Well it's complicated lol. GE bought out Westinghouse and then TECO bought out GE in the motor stuff. They do still have some repair shops but from what we've found is they aren't the easiest to work with and definately not the cheapest. Most companies are more interested in getting you to upgrade/update and not repair and when they do repair they want to put their own "spin" on things because some design engineer thinks it's a better way. When they made all these things way back when they knew what they were doing and did it VERY well. The last thing to do is try to change it. Believe it or not but the last time we had a motor issue (before my time here) they had a Westinghouse shop do the work and that motor aint ran the same since for some of those very reasons. I'm sure we've all been down this road with something or another lol.
 
Here's a pic of the ole girl. It drives a 70k gal/minute pump. This one unit accounts for about 60% of my total pumping capacity hence the level of stress lol.
20220429_153936.jpg
 
I definately appreciate that! If the Big Guy upstairs could hold back in the precip dept for a couple weeks would be awesome lol.
We'd appreciate it if He would move some of that precip back this way to SE NM! It's so dry here a harsh look will start a wildfire!

Also, that's an impressive motor! I'll second the notion that they just don't make some things as good they used to.

Ed
 
We got some moisture and I was hoping that some of it fell down southwest of here . It's a chore to change things out new motor base ect. a ton of work . It looks like the circulating water pumps for the cooling water at a power plant .
 
I sure wish I could send the water elsewhere from here to all the drought strictened areas. We've been too wet all winter really. I've toured a couple of coal fired powerplants when I was younger. I'd say there is alot of similarities here and there. The pump is made by Worthington, same age. Impeller still looks as good as new.
 
Worthington makes good pumps still . The motors were from Westinghouse ran on 4160 weighed 6 tons . Our hoist motor was D.C. ran through a converter but looked a lot like yours and was probably made about the same time I think in New York we ended up sending it to Canada for rewind . Aton of people would love to have some of the rain you guys are getting this year . the water flow was measured in acre feet not sure how that converts to gpm .
 
These drives run on 2200VAC and only 327rpm. I kinda do my own math on what I'm in for when it rains. Funfact, there's 27143gals of water in one inch of rain per acre. I pump water off of roughly 15 to 18k acres. My total running capacity is about 8.2 million gals per hr. Granted you have to take into effect not all will runoff and some will evaporate. I can usually get pretty close to how long I will run after the sky clears lol.
 
Well it's complicated lol. GE bought out Westinghouse and then TECO bought out GE in the motor stuff. They do still have some repair shops but from what we've found is they aren't the easiest to work with and definately not the cheapest. Most companies are more interested in getting you to upgrade/update and not repair and when they do repair they want to put their own "spin" on things because some design engineer thinks it's a better way. When they made all these things way back when they knew what they were doing and did it VERY well. The last thing to do is try to change it. Believe it or not but the last time we had a motor issue (before my time here) they had a Westinghouse shop do the work and that motor aint ran the same since for some of those very reasons. I'm sure we've all been down this road with something or another lol.

I worked for Westinghouse for a few years building electric generators. We got bought out by CBS yep Westinghouse was big on the media side and the all the power generation stuff sold to GE. Dad stayed with GE until he retired but I moved on to electric distribution

Thanks

Buck
 
Buck , you were a dispatcher ? We had the crews from G E re wind our generators a couple of times as they have copper bars in their windings instead of wire and over the years the bars grow in length then ground out , but You knew that Buck . There is a lot of interesting things out there . Back in the early 70's I visited a ship down in San Diago where they tried to lock in or tie on line a generator with the others running that was 180 degrees out of synchronization . The safety features didn't work and it sure made a mess of things . I worked on an exciter once where an electrician dropped a set of brushes that made contact with the armature running at 3600 rpm it blew two divets out of the shaft the size of my fist and an inch or so deep . It didn't kill him but he was in the hospital for a week and found a new job . We had a G.E. rep for advice and direction . We ground out the heat affected zone then turned the shaft 180 degrees and ground a similar amount of material out of the shaft to balance the shaft and keep it from vibrating . A lot more goes into building those big machines then a person would think . 74's pump is an impressive piece of art work . It is balanced so that it also has little vibration's when it runs . The amount of torque it takes just to get it started turning is impressive . Back in 1973 I went to school for steam power and propulsion it's all fascinating to learn of what people do in their lives besides hunt coyote . Maybe not by blood but a small family of coyote hunters here . I got sent to school for steam power and then they sent me to a hot sweltering place where I didn't do anything with what they trained me to do . Good experiences nun the less life has it's twists and turns and a reason for what we experience .
 
Pretty cool that several of you guys can relate with this. Small world it is. I'm awestruck in the accomplishments of our predecesors. When they made all this kind of stuff, there were no computers, calculators, fancy measuring tools we have today. They just had their brains and the level at which they accounted for every little detail back then is amazing. Not sure if my pic shows it but on the mounting bases of the motor are several finite adjustment bolts/studs that are used to make perfect alignment between the 2 shafts and also Id assume to adjust and keep the correct air gap between the rotor and stator as the babbits wear.
I have a couple different starting procedures. Either of the 2 will make the hair on the back of your neck stand up regardless how many times I do it lol. I also have to pull vacuum to prime and then to get all the air out of the pipes.
 
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