Seeking info on Brush Electrical Machinery 1

[rmw]

I need to brush up (pardon the pun) on BEM, Brush Electrical Machines both as a machine and as a company.

Any of my peers have any input about them or their generators/motors good or bad.

They name is new to me, and I will soon have an application where I will need to know some background on them.

rmw

 

[ScottyUK]

Brush are an old-established company from Loughbrough, England. Part of the FKI Group.

We've got a number of their generators on site. They're of a reasonable standard, but nothing more. We've had a few problems in recent years with failures where we shouldn't be getting them. They are quite maintenance-heavy to keep them in decent shape - we see a lot of PD activity on the end windings. Frankly they aren't of the standard that the older machines from, say, Parsons, GEC or Westinghouse were built to, but I'll bet that they didn't cost anything near as much either. You get what you pay for.

Their motors are reasonably reliable, and reasonable quality. Not exceptional in either a good or bad sense. Same applies to their transformers.



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One day my ship will come in.
But with my luck, I'll be at the airport!

 

[rmw]

Thanks Scotty.

Either you are the only user that they have out there, or you pretty much summed it up for all the rest.

As I am a ME, please clarify your term "PD" for me. As a Mechanical, it has different connotations.

rmw

 

[ScottyUK]

Hi RMW,

PD is an abbreviation for 'partial discharge'. PD is a problem where electrical insulation is locally overstressed by high voltage gradient. The insulation material suffers localised electrical breakdown in the affected area, although the voltage is not sufficient to cause an actual flashover between the conductors. It is typically initiated by surface contaminants or damage affecting the intended electrical field distribution, or by marginal design where an adjacent object - conductor or insulator - modifies the local voltage profile on the affected conductor. It is, needless to say, not a good thing to have!


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One day my ship will come in.
But with my luck, I'll be at the airport!

 

[hottip]

Well rmw, I've got one input: their customer service sucks ! Especially if you need them on emergency basis.

 

[TheBlacksmith]

General impression in my circles is that they are a low-cost, throw-away design, which seems to be what everyone else is saying.

 

[edison123]

Recently, we did a rewind for a hydro machine with the coils from Brush-SEM, their czech outfit, I think. The coils were poorly formed and insulated and failed in voltage endurance test. They didn't listen to our feedback and now four sets of coils costing nearly half a million euros have been rejected by the end client.



* Anyone who goes to see a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined *

 

[ScottyUK]

modifies the local voltage profile on the affected conductor

Spot the mistake!

modifies the local voltage profile on the affected INSULATOR.


Ooops.


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One day my ship will come in.
But with my luck, I'll be at the airport!

 

[rmw]

hottip,

What country is that comment based in?

ScottyUK,

See, as a ME, if you hadn't 'fessed up', how would I have ever known. The comment did strike me as odd, but I thought-well, I was the one who asked.

Thanks for clarifying, much clearer now.

To All,

This is the type feedback I was seeking. Thanks for responding.

rmw

 

[hottip]

rmw,

North Africa, but we contact the company from UK as they do not have a local agency for customer service.

 

[ahung]

Hi rmw, in our power plant we have five (5) BRUSH Generators 133 MVA each one. According with our experiences we have some problems with oil leaks. We founded oil into the generator and for correct it we need to change the mechanicals seals. After that we not have anymore the oil leaks problems.
About the spare parts and customer services we have many difficulties because here in Venezuela we don´t have a commercial representation of Brush Electrical Machines (BEM). We tried to contact directly BEM but they not respond our requirements. Actually we found a Dealer in UK to buy some spare parts for the generators.

 

[ScottyUK]

ahung / RMW,

We see the oil seal problem too on our 170MVA / 15.5kV air cooled BDAX machines. They are dirty machines: we spend a lot of time cleaning out lakes of oil from the machine once it has run off the end windings into the belly of the beast.

Spares seem to be made to order, hence the long lead time. I'm not sure if that is actually the case, but it is the best explanation we can come up with. It is unusual to get something 'off the shelf'. Nothing is cheap.


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One day my ship will come in.
But with my luck, I'll be at the airport!

 

[abeltio]

in europe they are quite popular in the mid range 40~80MVA in some plants they've been quite successful... depending on the maintenance program in place of course.

saludos.
a.

 

[rmw]

ScottyUK,

Once upon a time in land far far away, I was a service engineer for a major turbine/generator OEM. In my experience there, nothing other than maybe simple things like nuts and bolts and gaskets were 'off the shelf.' That was a long time ago, and I would expect even less today.

I have a saying to bring it home to my clients. I tell them 'some poor dude is still driving around in the junk car that will ultimately be melted down for the steel to make your part-better contact the vendor and get an order working now.' Few understand that no one stocks anything any more. Not even the clients. Their inventory taxes tear them up.

So, I am not surprised at your comment. In the new world of 'JIT' can it be any other way?

rmw

 

[rmw]

Anyone else want to wade in on this one? I have only a few more days to make an evaluation, so any additional comments from anyone with experience with any of the FKI companies would be appreciated.

rmw