The EMA Blog

EMA has been servicing the electric motor drives on large tunnel boring machines for some time now.  A  Drive Lines newsletter article, Boring Service Call, was published in January of 07 about a specific call here in Georgia. 
The largest TBM company in the world is Herrenknecht in Schwanau Germany. Trey and I were privileged [...]

We were asked by Cornell University to look at replacing the VFD  and programmable logic controller (PLC) for their boiler’s induced draft (ID) fan.  The PLC was an old Telemechanique unit, and the program resided on a 5.25 inch floppy. 
To begin the process  we had to figure out their program.  Whomever had done the original [...]

We’ve seen two instances recently of extensively  damaged Toshiba VT130P2 800 horsepower VFD s. These particular variable frequency drives are often found in waste water treatment plants.
On the most recent call, we discovered that 12 cooling fans were damaged, resulting in excessive temperatures building up on the input rectifiers.  The output IGBTs were fitted [...]

I’m privileged to serve on the board of directors of Mission 10:14,  a Christian faith based ministry to Mali.  Mali is a poor country in west Africa, and one of the major health concerns is malaria.  Malaria is spread by mosquitoes, and one proven and simple technique to greatly reduce the spread is mosquito nets.  [...]

We have some Reliance technical information available for download.  Much of our Reliance technical info is in hard copy form, so we’re unable to post everything.
Click HERE for the directory.  Keep in mind that EMA is a world class repair center for Reliance drives, and has experience on both old and new Reliance equipment.

In today’s power sensitive environments, it would behoove every facilities or maintenance supervisor to be aware of voltage transients and ways to suppress them. In the world of electronic motor drives, the manufacturers tell us that transients are the number one cause of power semiconductor failures within VFD s. But, it’s not just the drives [...]

A number of companies have pump controls on the market.  We’ve designed, installed, and worked on many of them over the years, ranging from irrigation systems to waste water facilities to HVAC water pumps.  VFD s have been routinely applied to pumps both for saving energy, and for offering better process control   In [...]

Looking for hard to find Saftronics technical manuals?  EMA has a number of them online that you can download. Click here for an index. Looking for other hard to find technical data on drives and controls?  Well, email us.  We’re in the process of putting a number of them online, but will email [...]

EMA’s Cortland New York service facility was recently called to look at a 1000 horsepower  load commutated Ross Hills Drive (LCI). These drives require a special motor, which has a salient pole or fixed field rotor to operate. 
The drive cabinet showed extensive arc-flash damage, evidently from a loose bolt, which had actually
exploded [...]

Several of us at EMA were privileged to attend the Atlanta leadership conference sponsored by the ChickFilet company.   My favorite speaker there was Jim Collins. I always get something from what he says.
If you’ve ever read his bestselling book “How the Mighty Fall”  you know that he chronicles how companies go through five steps to [...]