Baldor Electric plant photo

I imagine that the large flat disks are blanks for motor shells, that will be deep-drawn in a later step.

OT - Another article has a picture of a statue in Tsonjin Boldog.

says "A 131-foot-tall statue of Genghis Khan and his horse, in stainless steel, sits atop the Mongolian steppe..." and "... 250 tons of gleaming stainless steel. Visitors can even take an elevator and emerge from between his legs to gaze at the lush Mongolian steppe from a deck atop his steed?s head."

James Waldby wrote in news:nKmdnczwSep6auvXnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@bresnan.com:

I've never seen a common production motor with a drawn housing. Rolled and welded, or rolled with a row of tabs in pockets like a puzzle piece, or cast.

My guess based on the gauge and proportions is that these discs are going to be stamped into fan shrouds.

Then they would be round, not square, no?

The square discs may be stamped into endbells for square shaped motors, like DC motors and servos and such.

Or potentially into the motor wire box for the smalelr ones...

Or you could all be wrong and the plant is doing contract work for another company like Caterpiller, etc.

Paul

Both rotors and stators are made up of laminations of relatively thin steel (sheetmetal). At some point in production, the individual sections of the laminations for both rotors and stators would be disk-shaped. The internal fans on TEFC totally enclosed fan cooled motors may be fabrcated from steel disks. Generally, the external fans on small (under 10 HP) TEFC models are plastic, IME.

Some time when a motor is apart, notice that the stack of disks of the rotor are arranged in a helix-like pattern. A circle of holes arranged around the center/shaft hole go from end-to-end thru a rotor to provide cooling air paths with air passing thru the rotor.

Some of the orange painted stacks (foreground of picher) include round disks that have a circle of punched holes around the center hole (almost looks like a screw-on oil filter base plate), are fairly regularly seen as rotor laminations in common AC induction motors.

Thicker mostly square plates could be formed into the foot/base plate that's typically welded to the cylindrical case section.

I don't recall seeing square case Baldor motors, but I have seen quite a few Reliance industrial motors with square cases, hence the stator laminations outer dimensions were square shaped.

What seems odd to me is that so much material, layed out the way it is in the pitcher, all needs human handling. I wonder if this area isn't just for custom motor orders. Human handling/manipulation (picking, sorting, counting, placing etc) from point-to-point and so on, shouldn't be required for normal production.

BTW, the picture caption doesn't expressly state that motors are being made in the St. Louis plant, but I suppose it's a fair guess.

Me either.

Stock photos run by a leftwing media organization are often either forged, or of something else altogether.

Their readers are so stupid or oblivious that anything works.

Good catch!!!

Gunner

'In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American... There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language.. and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.' Theodore Ro osevelt 1907