SHOP TALK

"Do the noise for us." That was a running gag on NPR's Car Talk, where the Magliozzi brothers from Boston diagnosed car problems based on callers trying to imitate the sounds their vehicles made. "Is it more of a 'click-click-click' or a 'thunk-thunk-thunk'?" they'd ask, somehow extracting diagnostic gold from amateur sound effects over the phone. The sounds your motor makes can indicate what's failing inside if you know how to listen. Electrical problems sound different from

It’s music to your ears as you walk the floor at your facility: the steady hum of motors keeping production running. But what happens when that hum changes? When vibration increases just slightly? When a bearing starts making noise that's not quite right? Motors don't just fail overnight. They give you warnings. The question is: are you reading the signs? At Independent Electric, we've spent over 100 years helping Midwest manufacturers avoid catastrophic motor failures. And h

Sixty percent of motor failures can be attributed to bearing problems. That's the dominant failure mode for industrial motors, and these failures are almost entirely preventable if you catch them early. Vibration analysis detects bearing problems, misalignment issues, and rotor imbalances months before catastrophic failure, catching problems that are undetectable by observation alone. Here's what it prevents and what those failures cost when you don't catch them early. Three

Picture this: Your critical production motor starts making a strange humming sound. Before you can investigate, smoke pours out. The motor shuts down completely. Your line stops. And when your motor service partner inspects it, the news isn’t good: it needs a rewind. The quote? $15,000 to $20,000. The lead time? Two to four weeks. The cost of being down that long? That's the number that really hurts. This is what a catastrophic electrical failure looks like. And it's exactly