The Neptune uses a switched-reluctance motor made by Emerson, or at least the first ones did. It would have to be run with the controller designed to run it. SR motors are neat in that they pack a LOT of power in a small space, have excellent low-speed torque, are capable of very high speeds, and they're amenable to nearly infinite speed control. The downsides are that they tend to have a lot of torque ripple, cost more to produce than induction motors, and require electronics to work at all -- though the elex are less complex and expensive than a VFD in comparable volume while offering much greater speed range.
Maytag went with an SR motor in the Neptune because it obviated the need for a mechanical transmission.
Maytag's recent (last few years) march toward medocrity seems to have begun about the time VP of Engrg Curran Cotton retired. May be a coincidence but I'm inclined to doubt it. He was utterly uncompromising about quality, reliability and performance. I enjoyed working with him a lot.
See
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for a primer on SR motors. Lots of other stuff on the web as well.
Which still leaves you with a totally open motor that will be a swarf magnet, ready to short out the terminals. If someone doesn't hit it with a tool or a workpiece and wipe out one of the exposed windings first. Or you can waste even more time fabricating a shroud for the motor.
And with a 3-phase motor from a Neptune, you'll need to locate a compatible VFD, or rip the one out of the washer controller and adapt it for the use.
Go buy a new or used motor of the right type for the application.
It CAN be done for cheap, but why? It will require vast quantities of effort, and the end of it the results will still be half-vast. ;-)
Respects, Unka George, but your concept of product charter and design spec is rather naive. In practice, these are always moving targets, as fuzzy as those who write them can get away with. Very few career-oriented engineering managers have the cojones or corporate tactical skills (sneaky, devious, alert cunning and sly) to confront or subvert marketing and/or procurement when they control the money.
An example of one who did was Kelly Johnson (from Ishpeming, MI, a yooper) who ran the skunkworks at Lockheed. I ran a skunkworks too, but nothing like Kelly Johnson did. Tawk about giss dat got er done, hey!
The Neptune was a well-conceived innovative design that combined the water and energy economy of European front-loaders with the capacity of American top-loaders using some new technology to get there. I knew some of the engineers that were on the Neptune design team. They were excellent engineers. The prototype Neptunes were incredible machines, passed very rigorous testing that went on for months. The woman that ran the test lab was not beholden to engineering, and while she was a very nice person she was utterly ruthless in her lab. First production machines were good too. I know a number of folks that have had them for some years now with zero problems. First production machines were about $1200. Maytag couldn't keep up with demand.
Then the beancounters took over the show.
About the time of the Neptune intro, Maytag got a new CEO, formerly from PepsiCo, who was very good at marketing brown sugar water in competition with Coca Cola. The VP of Eng, whom I worked with (not for, I was never an employee of Maytag) and liked and respected, was pastured nearly immediately thereafter. The rest is sad history. A contemplated sequel to Neptune also got scrapped at that time. I can't say more about that, but it was REALLY COOL!
I've heard that Asko Cylinda has also gone to hell, at least with the products they export to the U.S. Another sad story. When I worked with them about a decade ago their appliances were superb, on a par with the classic design of the KitchenAid mixer. They weren't cheap but they worked flawlessly and silently and lasted about forever. I had an engineer on site in-country for most of a year, working with their engineers, and I was there now and then as well. They made really good stuff at the time.
You're right, Unka George, these should be B-school case studies. I can attest that the engineers who designed these products were very comptent, even unusually competent, with industry-specific skills and good cost consciousness. Hell of it is, they did such a good job of minimizing cost without compromising function that there was no fat to cut. When the beancounters cut anyway, they trashed the products and eventually trashed the reputation of companies that had made very reliable high-quality products for decades.
I replaced the bearings in my neptune, it took most of a day but 90% of that time was due to the location of my washer - the job itself is not that hard - remove some stuff from teh front, remove the back panel and pulley, pull the drum, drive out the bearings, put in the new ones and reassemble - if you had good access instead of having to move a 500 pound shelf to go from front to back, it's easy, and I don't see the risk of breakage unless you are a real klutz with tools - the bearings are just pressed into a housing like on anything else - so just remove them.
but, if you want to scrap it, it is yours afterall. I sold a spare control board (not the motor board) on ebay for around $100, so the parts are valuable.
maytag entered chapter 11, right? the washer isn't all that bad actually (I have one), but in terms of reliability, my 50 year old maytag is more reliable.
=========================== If this is the case, and you appear to know what you are talking about from this and other posts in this thread, then the complaints about America's decline in competitiveness being caused by a "shortage" of competent scientists, engineers and technicians is just another management smokescreen to cover their looting and incompetence.
The actual problem appears to be a gross oversupply of MBAs and accountants that forget they are there to "keep score," and the businesses they are running are intended to be "going enterprise," not "cash cows" to be milked (in this case to death) as quickly and as hard as possible.
Yet another example of assets that took years to grow, in this case brand reputation and product expertise, being liquidated for fractions of a penny on the dollar for immediate one-time cash.
Any chance that the suits will have to give their performance bonuses back because there wasn't any? :-<
I don't know how, but this country has got to develop some way to keep the fast buck sleaze artists and con-men out of management positions before they kill the country by killing all the legitimate profit making, tax paying companies.
Was Maytag done in by crooks at the top or by incompetents at the top?
Unka' George (George McDuffee) .............................. Only in Britain could it be thought a defect to be "too clever by half." The probability is that too many people are too stupid by three-quarters.
John Major (b. 1943), British Conservative politician, prime minister. Quoted in: Observer (London, 7 July 1991).
MBA = "Masters of Business Annihilation" They can destroy any business, anywhere, any time, then go on to their next mark with a huge severance package days before bankruptcy is announced.
I don't think there were any crooks involved. Managers seem to be vulerable to fad and fashion, nothing new about that. They're always looking for a "silver bullet", so they sieze an idea that may have worked somewhere and apply it wholesale whether it makes any sense or not. Examples are "participative management" ("you *will* employ participative management because I'm the boss and I say you will...") quality circles, six-sigma "black belts", the list is endless. Unfortunately a recent fad has been permissive acceptance and then eager adoption of greed and corruption. I don't think that was the case at Maytag, though. I think it was more a matter of moving from a product and quality oriented culture to one of aggressive cost reduction and minimization -- which put marketing and procurement ahead of engineering in the pecking order.
A situation like this in any company can lead to this sort of problem: engineers tend to work with proven competent quality vendors, while procurement goes for the lowest price and its up to engineering (what's left of it) to somehow make it work. Procurement selects and makes sweetheart deals with "preferred vendors", designers must then use only components from the preferred vendors whether or not they are functionally the best (or even a suitable) choice.
Having the company dominated by engineering would be just as bad; then products might cost too much to gain and maintain market share, or be difficult for anyone but a technophile to use.
Top management must set goals that are enterprise goals, rather than competing or conflicting goals where one part of the org can look good (make its goals) by making the job of another part of the org more difficult. Management by formula or fad doesn't work for long.
Usually, the story is very simple. There is a brand established on quality. A new manager comes in. There is always an "agency problem", which is that the manager's interests differ from those of long term shareholders. It does not help if there are too few long term shareholders, as often is the case.
If a manager is selfish or has limited foresight, there is very apparent and obvious way to improve reported profits by buying cheaper components or using cheaper designs to save on costs. That's because decline in brand value is neither easy to calculate, nor it is reportable.
Cost savings show up in the P&L very instantly and can please Wall Street pundits and lead to big bonuses. Eventually the brand is ruined by poor quality, which tends to happen after the manager was paid the bonus.
The root of the problem is that there are not enough interested, intelligent long term shareholders.
Sounds like you are describing the Ford Motor Company and it's great success with the transmission on the Taurus. When my transmission went out with less than 50k miles one of the problems was with a cracked aluminum piston. Ford made a steel replacement piston but for some reason they didn't bother to incorporate the stronger steel piston in the transmissions from the factory.
let's not blame the MBAs, let's not blame the engineers, let's not even blame the CEO - let's blame the tax code.
the curren ttax code encourages quick profits and capital gains. You want to see a long term outlook, then REWARD a long term outlook. Tax Capitol Gains at 99%. Reduce the tax by 1% per month that the stock or item is held. Poof, instantly managers will target a 5 to 7 year horizon. Make the reduction 1/2 % per year held and you'll start to see real long term planning.
============================== While appealing on the surface, this makes, as the lawyers say, "an assumption of facts not in evidence," specifically that modern management is acting as professional fiduciary agents in the long-term best interest of the majority of the stockholders. Unfortunately, this is not supported by the facts.
The annihilation of any management commitment to long-term relationships with employees or suppliers in American industry means that the smart know they are involved in a series of "one night stands." Most people are aware there is no honor in a "one night stand" and the intelligent move is to "take the money and run." The problem is that the lack of a continuing relationship renders the underpinning of the free market, i.e. the famous invisible hand, impotent and an object of ridicule by the cognoscenti. It was observed over 100 years ago "The law frequently allows what honor forbids," and we now have the "Twinkle Toes" MBAs as the ideal.
Modern management may dress nicer and smell better than the Huns and Goths did, but they are no less thorough in looting and pillaging of assets that it took generations to create, and cause as much havoc. Unfortunately they also appear to be much more intelligent and far better educated than the Huns and Goths, proving again that when you educate a crook, all you get is a smarter crook.
The famous observation "If god did not want them sheared, he would have not made them sheep," appears more correct to me with every passing day.
Unka' George (George McDuffee) .............................. Only in Britain could it be thought a defect to be "too clever by half." The probability is that too many people are too stupid by three-quarters.
John Major (b. 1943), British Conservative politician, prime minister. Quoted in: Observer (London, 7 July 1991).
There you go again, making sense. How long do we have to put up with you making these well-reasoned, non-inflamitory, sensible posts? Don't you realize this is Usenet? Can't you be provocative, dogmatic, and trite? Yure not from 'round here, areya?
Thanks Roger for reminding me of that crock of shit.
I owned 2 Taurus, a wagon for me and a sedan for my wife. They were actually pretty decent cars except for the utter piece of crap that Ford called an auto transmission.
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