Success Stories: Baldor Electric Company, a leader in energy efficient electric motors, linear motors and adjustable speed drives industry


	Product Quick Search

Success Stories
<< Return to list

Baldor Vector Drive^� Saves Time and Maintenance Costs

Baldor Vector Drive<sup>�</sup> Saves Time and Maintenance Costs

Clarke Arnold from R.S. Boreham Co. Inc., Baldor's District Sales Office in Los Angeles has supplied this very interesting Success Story featuring a Baldor Vector Drive on a coil winding application.

Power Magnetics, located in the Torrance area of Southern California, manufactures transformers and power conditioning equipment. Copper is one of the key components of the transformers, and it must be wound on the core with precision. The wire (from 10 gauge up to 10' wide copper plate) is formed around a core with insulators between the layers of wire. The wire is fed off of spools through a tension block. The operator feeds the wire onto the transformer core, mounted on the mandrel as the mandrel rotates. They were using a DC motor, and a clutch/brake system for the heavy gauge wires and a leather belt system for the smaller sizes. The operator was having trouble varying the speed of the mandrel. In addition, the old system was causing quality problems and excessive downtime. The clutch and brake were high wear items since the winder was constantly cycling the spindle several times a minute. As wear occurred the system would not hold tension.

The solution called for a Baldor Vector Drive. The operator is now able to use a foot control to vary the speed of the mandrel. When the speed is zero, the wire is held in much better tension. He also has better control of slow speeds. The Baldor Vector Drive provided full torque from zero to base speed as well as constant horsepower to maximum speed. The ease of set up and use of the Baldor keypad, especially the "AutoTune" feature helped sell this project, and Power Magnetics people have become very adept at setting up Baldor controls.

The Baldor Vector Drive saved a lot of expense related to maintenance and downtime. The initial investment was about the same price as replacing the clutch and brake. Its ability to generate very high torques at slow speeds proved ideal for this application. Clarke says that Baldor's Matched Perfonnance^TM curves helped in his sales presentation because they related to actual lab tests of our motors and controls. Clarke also reports that our good customer N.A. D'Arcy Co. was involved in this sale, too. Our distributor, N.A. D'Arcy, has been trained on various Baldor Inverter and Vector products. They were able to recognize the opportunity for a good fit of new technology and existing machinery which would result in increased production and decreased maintenance. N.A. D'Arcy scheduled a joint sales call with their Baldor sales engineer, and the details were finalized. Baldor participated in the winding station start-up with the assistance of the distributor and the Power Magnetics maintenance group. Power Magnetics was very pleased that not only did we get rid of the clutch, but the brake as well. Now there is no danger to the operator if power fails. Clarke says that eight systems have been replaced by Baldor now, and that all the Power Magnetics winding stands will be redone with Baldor Vector Drives in the very near future.

Products | Support | News/Events | About Baldor | Investor Relations | Home
Baldor Electric Company is an equal opportunity employer.
Copyright © 2001-2009 Baldor Electric Company. All rights reserved.
This site works best with Internet Explorer and Netscape 4.x and above.