Big electric motor

[Freightshaker]

Working at a aluminum rolling mill the past few weeks on fall outage PMs. For the most part we work on the chillers and air handlers for motor and motor room cooling. Last week they did a tear down on 2 out of 3 of the finishing mill motors. One of the armatures was pulled for offsite work. They have special cradles with enclosures for motor part moving and storage. The armature alone weighed 60,000 lb. with cradle enclosure the weight was just shy of 90,000lb. It was disassembled, worked on, parts trucked out, parts trucked back, reassembled and rolling aluminum in one week
Today they rolled an even bigger motor in for a different mill. 153,000lb armature with 193,000lb. cradle/armature weight. Makes me feel like I'm playing with a tonka truck in the sandbox while the kids next door are playing with haul-trucks in a strip-mine.

[ga-hvac-tech]

Pictures would be good... if allowed. With something for reference of size.

I have played with motors as large as oil drums... nothing that weighed 30 tons though...

[meplumber]

I've done a lot of paper mill, textile mill, and die cast plant work over the years, and have never seen a motor that big. Would love to see the pictures of that as well.

[ryan1088]

That is nuts. Would love to see pictures!

[Freightshaker]

You don't know how bad I wanted to take one! This mill is so clean, nice, helpful, and gives us so much work. I would be a sad guy if I stood out in the open and snapped a pic and got in trouble. The shaft size is probably about the diameter of a drum if that helps haha.
About the only picture I have is of a air handler bearing.(which is more disappointing) It has a 200hp motor driving it via poly chain at a 1:1 ratio. They use two of the air handlers twined with two 250 ton RTAC tranes to keep the motors happy.

The auto greaser is not on it but the vibration sensors are. You can tell they like to be preventative.

[Freightshaker]

Here is a lightweight motor room there. The closest motor is 1500hp coupled to another one just to the left out of sight.
In the background is two 5000hp motors coupled together. You can see their chilled water piping to their coils directly on top of them. The motor air recirculated inside themselves. They are sealed tight during operation. You can watch the chilled water temp and see how hard they are running.
They were running their chilled water temp so high they were on the edge of making the chillers take a dump. Thankfully they added some bypass valves, 8000 gal tank, and a bigger chiller than the current three combined. They do not like to slow down for hot motors and they want to push them to 120% all summer with no worries.

[carmon]

that is bbbbbbbig

[stvc]

Imagine what the electric bill would be just to start it!

[Nuclrchiller]

Being in this industry often reminds me of just what it takes to keep this country going, day to day. Most people have no idea. Those two 5000hp motors being enclosed like that reminds me of motor-generator sets.

[Freightshaker]

Being in this industry often reminds me of just what it takes to keep this country going, day to day. Most people have no idea. Those two 5000hp motors being enclosed like that reminds me of motor-generator sets.

Hard to believe and these are the small ones. All this is here running wide open no expenses spared to maintain continuous production so Americans can crack open a cold one.

[Freightshaker]

I have a lot of pride working in this industry because we are kind of the unsung heroes. People dont understand how important HVAC is to modern life until it breaks.

[motoguy128]

Our coal boiler has a 3500HP ID Fan with a VFD the size of a small room.

The fresh air fan for the HRSG on our Cogeneration gas boiler is 1250HP.

Kind of makes thsoe little 1/20th HP fans on a residental ID fan seem a little small.

All this helps produce corn syrup for that nice cold can of soda, loaf of bread, food for cattle, chewing gum and plenty of other products.

Big foundaries, paper mills and other mills are truely impressive. We're just a tiny corn mill.

[Tommy knocker]

Yep. When they crack these open we have to stop and stare in awe. Usually takes shaker an hour or so to recover.