ESS Electronic Speed Switch from TORQ Corporation

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Excerpt: The TORQ Speedetex® ESS Electronic Speed Switch is used in bulk material handling/processing systems to monitor speeds of belt conveyors, screw conveyors, bucket elevators, rotary feeder shafts, rotating drums and other types of rotating machinery to protect elevators, feeders and conveyors from sp …

Variable Speed Brushless DC Motors

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Excerpt: Northland Motor Technologies offers a line of Drives for brushless DC (Electronically Commutated) motors. The compact size and wide range of input voltages covered by the 3 new models makes the NMT BD Series of drives ideal for use on equipment requiring variable speed, remote controllability and re …

CanWEA attracts top OEMs

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Excerpt: Officials for the Canadian Wind Energy Association (CanWEA) Annual Conference and Exhibition in Toronto say they sold out all 350-booth spaces to 235 exhibitors at the September event. The attendee count topped 2,000. What’s more, the conference drew ten utility and commercial wind turbine OEMs, a …

Can we Overcome the Betz Limit in Windpower Extraction?

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Excerpt: Editor’s note: Inventor Horia Nica has applied for a patent on a device that couples a vertical-axis wind turbine with a device that captures heat from passing wind, a capability conceived by early 20th century inventor Nicola Tesla. Furthermore, the captured thermal energy is transferred to th …

Four Onboard Generators Mean Almost Never Having to Shut Down

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Excerpt: The Liberty 2.5 MW wind turbine from Clipper Windpower, Carpenteria, Calif., is Windpower Engineering’s first Turbine of the Month because its unusual engineering features address common industry headaches, most of them in unscheduled maintenance. Downtime often comes from gearbox stresses, swappi …

Why Taller Modular Towers Make Sense

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Excerpt: A modular turbine tower is one way to get around the shortcomings of conventional solid section designs. Peder M. Hansen Executive Vice President Northstar Wind Towers Blair, Nebraska Taller towers for wind turbines make sense in so many ways. For instance, an 80 m tower can let mod …

Clever Bearing and Planetary Drive Carries Greater Load

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Excerpt: Uncontrollable and highly variable wind forces adversely affect the performance and reliability of planetary gears inside wind-turbine power transmissions. A couple developments from The Timken Co., Canton, Ohio, can lower maintenance on rolling elements and carry greater load in a planetary gearset …

Simple and smart FAA lighting

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Excerpt: The L350-864G is a “one piece solution" and the result of thousands of installations worldwide in the wind energy market. TWR Lighting Inc., Houston, Texas (twrlighting.com) says it is the exclusive FAA-lighting supplier to several turbine manufacturers, developers, owners, and operators. The 33-l …

Better Ways to Check Bolt Tension

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Excerpt: Wind turbine operations and maintenance procedures call for a 100% inspection of fastener tension after 500 hours of operation. This work is costly and can easily take a number of days to complete because each fastener is typically checked with a torque wrench to verify its proper tension. Torque i …

Automated gearbox testing builds in consistency

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Excerpt: A gear manufacturer shows how it automated formerly time-consuming manual tests. William L. Winterbauer, Ph.D. Principal Engineer QED Services Ann Arbor, Mich. The U.S. military has demanding requirements for the hardware it needs. Take, for instance, a set of gearboxes built by Excel Gear Inc. …