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Tekwell Upgrades Industrial Electric Motor Service Equipment

The new tech includes dry ice cleaning and a patent-pending load roller bearing testing device.

With shops in Cartersville, GA, Knoxville, TN, and Chattanooga, TN, Tekwell specializes in industrial motor repair, electric motor refurbishment, and motor and gearbox alignment.
With shops in Cartersville, GA, Knoxville, TN, and Chattanooga, TN, Tekwell specializes in industrial motor repair, electric motor refurbishment, and motor and gearbox alignment.
Tekwell

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- Tekwell Services is an SKF-certified motor rebuilder that offers full service and repair for industrial motors, drives and pumps.

With shops in Cartersville, GA, Knoxville, TN, and Chattanooga, TN, Tekwell specializes in industrial motor repair, electric motor refurbishment, and motor and gearbox alignment.

This week, Tekwell announced new cleaning and testing equipment.

Dry Ice Cleaning 

Some motors are just too large to bring into the Tekwell shop for proper cleaning. For these situations, the company is now offering dry ice blasting cleaning services. 

Dry ice is excellent for cleaning motors because of its versatility. The company uses dry ice pellets, about the size of a grain of rice, and loads them into a hopper that is connected to a high velocity air compressor that “blasts” the dry ice into every gap and crevasse in the motor. The ice evaporates, leaving behind no residue. The cleaning method is gentle and can be used in a number of different ways 

Pump Testing System 

Tekwell has developed a unique way to load test industrial pumps for diagnostic purposes or to load test them after a repair has been completed. 

The company engineered a 6′ x 6′ x 8′ closed-loop water tank to measure the pump’s flow efficiency as well as test it for leaks before sending the pump to be re-installed at the worksite. The ability to test pumps without having to install them back into a production environment to see if they truly have been repaired saves considerable time and rework. 

This tank uses a ball valve to regulate flow pressure over a load curve which is carefully measured within the tank to verify that the pump is working, moving water at the proper rate. 

Roller Bearing Loading

Tekwell Services recently partnered with SKF to develop a one-of-a-kind apparatus to help test roller bearings properly. Most roller bearings require a load during testing to avoid damaging the bearing when running the motor, but because there are no simple, reliable, and safe devices to accurately measure and display the bearing load, most shops ignore the loading of roller bearings during testing under the misguided belief that the test run doesn’t really damage the bearing.

SKF has proven that testing roller bearings without proper loading damages them especially in high speed applications. 

Tekwell designed and manufactured a load roller bearing testing device (patent pending) to be mounted to a standard T plate to apply a load vertically or horizontally.

The load is then applied by a single threaded rod attached to a load cell with a digital readout. The load cell and display can also be calibrated annually to meet the strict quality control requirements of the SKF Certified Rebuilder program. 

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