The Iris Power SWATM instrument allows maintenance personnel to easily and effectively assess the tightness of stator wedges in motors or generators. If the wedges are loose, this may allow stator coils or bars to vibrate in the slot, leading to insulation abrasion and a ground fault. Electronic measurement and storage enables easy and accurate trending of wedge tightness data from test to test.
Stator wedges are traditionally tested for tightness by tapping them with a hammer and listening to the sound produced. This method is slow and prone to inconsistency. Electronic wedge tightness evaluation is faster, more accurate and provides more consistent results. The Iris Power SWA instrument can be used to test most types of generator and motor stator slot wedges, including those with ripple springs.
A hand-held probe automatically taps and measures each wedge approximately 30 times in three seconds. An accelerometer gathers the data and transmits it to the Iris Power SWA instrument. Results are presented on a computer in the form of numeric values and a color-coded tightness map.
Make well-informed maintenance decisions based upon reliable and consistent SWA data.
• Use for all rotating machinery, including wedging systems with ripple springs.
• In Standard test mode, tightness of each wedge is compared to predefined values while in Advanced mode, the tightness of each wedge can be compared to all other wedges in the winding, the wedges of another winding or any user selected external reference.
• Repeatable, objective, numeric test data removes subjectivity of hand tapping methods.
• Fast, easy wedge tightness testing and analysis.
• Permanent record of test data.
• Easy report generation.