A large urban city water treatment facility uses large power driven chain-linked scrapers called “flights” to extract impurities (i.e. mud and silt) from each cistern as part of the water purification process. The drive system, specifically the gear sets, would repeatedly fail. Excessive torque was the suspected cause.
Engineers used several TorqueTrak 10K telemetry instruments from Binsfeld Engineering at various sections of the system to measure the true operating torque. It was determined that operating torque was normal, but the gear sets were undersized relative the actual workload. Stronger gear sets were installed and the failures have ceased. Precise torque measurement data led the engineers toward the correct solution to the an expensive gearbox failure problem.