Motor bearing failure

I`m sure everyone here has been to a motor that had noisy bearings or had tripped due to the bearings collapsing. I`ve been to many but have never had to watch one actually fail.
The site I`m on has a boiler fed by a 110kw water feed pump at 44 bar. Due to cost cutting the standby pump has been out of service for over a year. A few weeks ago the remaing one failed with a drive end bearing overheating. Much panic ensued as we only have one boiler and the entire site shuts down when the bolier fails; the motor was taken off the other pump and fitted in place of the bearing failure one. Halfway into a twelve hour night shift I thought the motor NDE was starting to be noisy but I put this down to listening just a bit to hard. One hour later I knew there was a problem developing as the noise was definitely there. If we had another pump I`d have switched over but I was stuck with this one. Over the next three hours it became increasingly louder so by 4.30 am I was phoning people up to inform them of impending shutdown (we have to do this as a procedure) 4.45: smoke was filling the plant room and I saw in was coming from the NDE along with loud screeching. I shut down the pump along with the boiler. A new motor was fitted and the boiler on line again fifteen hours later. So much for cost cutting!
The reason for posting this is I often read that bearings usually fail over a period of months (I`ve asked for bearing monitoring but once agian "cost cutting" gets in the way) so it was quite an experience to be present during the rapid failure of a bearing.

Thanks for sharing.

Do the people in charge of the cost cutting get a pay rise because of the costs they have cut?

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Originally Posted by HVACRsaurus

Thanks for sharing.

Do the people in charge of the cost cutting get a pay rise because of the costs they have cut?

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Of course they do!
Engineers plan for the future, Others plan for now!
Glenn now is the time to ask for a stand-bye pump and who ever says no,
Ask them to confirm in writing that you are not authorised to get one.
After that you are covered. its a brave or stupid fellow that signs your disclaimer.
Grizzly

On one of our site facilities and property managers get bonusses for cutting costs. thats how difficult it is engineers to plan.

Pump motor sat for a year and lubricant moved down from the upper side of bearings, leaving a good portion of the bearing dry and exposed to moisture and surface rust. Most likely some lubricant leaked out.

Initial spin up of your motor left the bearings chewing on a combination of excess friction and heat, metal fragments and diluted lubricant.....I guess you figured that much anyway :)
Interesting reading so thanks for sharing.