Robot improves motor inspection

Called the ABB InSight, the 8.5 mm high robotic inspection crawler is tethered to a control cabinet that features two large and three small monitors. A joystick and speed controller is used to navigate the crawler – which uses a magnetic roller mechanism – around the air gap and to adjust four of the five cameras. On board LEDs illuminate the journey, while a microprocessor, accelerometers, RS485 communication and video multiplexing provides a video feed of the stator and rotor core, winding, wedges, stator teeth, air ducts, rotor support blocks and parts of the end windings.

A modular track can be reconfigured to provide in-situ visual inspections for a wide variety of motors and generators in a fraction of the time of conventional methods. Unlike conventional inspection devices, which are restricted to turbo/hydro generators with very large air gaps, ABB InSight can be used on all large motors and generators which have an air gap of 10mm or more.

A typical inspection using InSight takes around 3 days, compared with the eight days it would take to carry out an inspection with the rotor removed.