April 24, 2024
While HECO’s 2024 RPM Symposium will be held this fall on Oct. 1-2 in Kalamazoo, there’s still a lot to learn from our 2023 event – including Bob Bolhuis’ breakout session, “The Six Elements of a Successful Equipment Management Program.” About Our Speaker & RPM A HECO employee since 1986, Bolhuis is HECO’s Manager of Business …
March 13, 2024
Regardless of your specific operation, there are numerous systems in place to keep your facility running smoothly and efficiently. At HECO, we strongly urge placing an active Equipment Management System (EMS) at the top of your list of priorities. A good Equipment Management System is not a passive program. It should include a proactive approach …
July 26, 2023
Building upon the “Are You and Your Assets Prepared” information provided by HECO Director of Reliability and Senior Reliability Engineer for HECO’s Predictive Service Group Jason Spettel’s insights in this first part of this series, we now turn to insights from HECO’s Vice President and CEO-Emeritus Mark Hatfield. In a perfect world, every electric motor …
June 28, 2023
Are you the kind of person that checks your vehicle’s oil level and quality between oil changes or do you just trust that the automotive manufacturer knows when your oil goes from “good” to “get an oil change now!” status? At HECO, we’re both hyper-aware of the manufacturer specifications and proactive about minding our machines …
May 10, 2023
When it comes to motors and equipment, a holistic approach requires viewing various segments as a whole rather than a collection of parts. For the purpose of this blog series, we’ll take that notion a step further to look at how issues within a given system are both predicted and responded to. At HECO, we …
November 11, 2021
It’s the middle of the night and a key motor in your facility broke down. Every hour of delay is costing thousands of dollars. You pull a drop-in spare from on-site storage and it doesn’t work. It was ice cold when you pulled it out, the bearings are making odd noises, and it looks like …
June 17, 2021
I2021-06-Asset management system for plant floor-06-17-2021t has always amazed me how unprepared some businesses are in the event of a breakdown of critical equipment. These unplanned plant shutdowns can have a tremendous financial impact costing companies hundreds of thousands of dollars per hour. Almost every time that we help one of our clients through one …
May 12, 2021
During failure investigations we often see misalignment on vertical motors as the failure mode and when we ask for alignment readings at time of installation, we often hear that the “motor and the base have a register fit and alignment isn’t required”. This is far from the truth. Let’s look at why alignment should at …
May 19, 2020
The air gap refers to an actual physical gap in an electric motor that separates the moving rotor and the stator core. This gap is a necessary part of motor design and the size of the air gap is one of the keys to motor performance and reliabilit. The Case for a Correct Air Gap …
July 2, 2019
An informative video about AC Synchronous Motors Below is a 5 minute video from an hour long presentation given by Todd Hatfield, Senior Electrical Engineer at HECO – All Systems Go, during the 2018 Reliability, Process, and Maintenance (RPM) Symposium. This clip covers the basis of synchronous motors and how they differ from induction motors. …
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