8 Motor parts and common faults 

By on

Straight forward list of some common motor faults:

  1. Shaft - Imbalance, Misalignment, Wear
  2. Rotor - Imbalance, Rotor Bar Faults, Loose Rotor, Eccentricity
  3. Stator - Stator Looseness, Incorrect Air Gap, Winding Fault
  4. Motor Bearing Housing -Mechanical Looseness, Misalignment
  5. Rolling Element Bearings - Cage, Ball/Roller, Outer and Inner Race Defects Looseness within the bearing
  6. Motor Feet - Structural Looseness/Soft Foot
  7. Base-plate/Foundations - Structural Looseness, Twisted Supports
  8. Motor insulation - Insulation breakdown

 If I've missed any other common faults, please take a bit of time to add them in as a comment below.



Steven McFadyen's avatar Steven McFadyen

Steven has over twenty five years experience working on some of the largest construction projects. He has a deep technical understanding of electrical engineering and is keen to share this knowledge. About the author

myElectrical Engineering

comments powered by Disqus

  1. Rajeevankeeran's avatar Rajeevankeeran says:
    12/28/2011 7:38 AM

    While it may not be a major problem in Low Voltage Motors, bearing damage due to circulating currents needs special mention. With Regards and wishing all a Happy New Year.


Comments are closed for this post:
  • have a question or need help, please use our Questions Section
  • spotted an error or have additional info that you think should be in this post, feel free to Contact Us



Generation of a Sine Wave

A fundamental concept behind the operation of alternating current systems is that voltage and current waveforms will be sinusoidal – a Sine Wave. This...

Restricted Earth Fault Protection

The windings of many medium and small sized transformers are protected by restricted earth fault (REF) systems. The illustration shows the principal of...

DC Component of Asymmetrical Faults

The image (reproduced from IEC 60909) shows a typical fault in an ac system.  From the illustration it can seen that there is an initial dc component ...

Questions - Reputation and Privilege

Our question and answer system while letting you do exactly what it says, is much more.  It is a dynamic user driven system, where our users not only ask...

Load Flow Study – how they work

A load flow study is the analysis of an electrical network carried out by an electrical engineer. The purpose is to understand how power flows around...

Fault Calculation - Per Unit System

Per unit fault calculations is a method whereby system impedances and quantities are normalised across different voltage levels to a common base.  By removing...

Maxwell's Equations - Gauss's Electric Field Law

Gauss's Electrical law defines the relation between charge ("Positive" & "Negative") and electric field.  The law was initially formulated by Carl Friedrich...

Robots - Interesting Videos

The robot folding towels post below was interesting enough at the time to post a link.  Recently I’ve come across a couple of other interesting videos...

Voltage Drop in Installations - Concepts

Problems on achieving maximum voltage drop within an installation come up often. Depending where you live, local regulations will have different limits...

Introduction to Lighting

When looking at the design of a lighting scheme it is useful to have an understanding on the nature of light itself and some of the basic theory associated...

Have some knowledge to share

If you have some expert knowledge or experience, why not consider sharing this with our community.  

By writing an electrical note, you will be educating our users and at the same time promoting your expertise within the engineering community.

To get started and understand our policy, you can read our How to Write an Electrical Note