During a weekend emergency call we were tasked to review a set of fan applications where synchronous belts were used. The application was seeing damage to the belts, bearings and other components over time. We reviewed the application, of course after wondering why they would do such a thing, which had constant rapid changes or order to maintain pressure.
Of course, once again, we make a few bucks solving a situation where sales and marketing folks decided to be engineers. Wondering – if they are making engineering decisions, shouldn’t they be carrying the same errors and omissions insurance the rest of us have to? Or can they just claim… ignorance… yes, that would be the polite term.
I would still recommend that management also talks to technically competent third parties when deciding on an energy improvement. As it was, the misapplication INCREASED energy consumption in addition to increasing maintenance costs. You know, because of the affinity laws. If you don’t know what they are, you probably shouldn’t be messing with it.
Finally, VFDs. Yeah, changes are necessary to drive settings when moving to synchronous belts in a variable torque, high inertia application. We got the system running and obtained some of the energy improvement and reliability back. Enjoy.
