Transcript
Speaker: Hi, everyone. Thanks for listening. My name is Stephen Kilger. I'm the managing editor of Feeding Grain Magazine and the host of the Feeding Grain podcast. Thank you so much for joining me today as we dive deep into the issues affecting the feed manufacturing, grain handling, and allied industries.
Speaker: Today's episode is brought to you by the Binwhip from Numat Systems. The powerful dual impact Binwhip removes the toughest buildup and blockages in industrial storage silos without hazardous silo entry.
Speaker: Learn more today at binwhip.com. Today, my guests are Brandon Cancleany, Global Project Manager of Definitive Purpose Motors, and Randall Sorrells, Global Segment Sales Manager, Food and Beverage, and EMA Motors, both for ABB.
Speaker: We sat down to talk about advancements in motor technology, including efficiency, sanitation, and new technology. I hope you enjoyed the interview. If you want to help out with the podcast and are listening to this in a podcasting app, please rate us and subscribe.
Speaker: If you're listening online, sign up for the Feed & Grain newsletter, Industry Watch, to see when new podcasts drop and stay up to date with news from around the industry. Now, on to the show. Thank you, Brandon.
Speaker: Thank you, Randall for joining me today. I really appreciate it. Why don't you guys just tell up me a little bit about yourselves and what you do at ABB and kind of your connection to the industry. I'll go ahead and start.
Speaker: My name is Brandon K. Quinney. I'm the global product manager for Definite Purpose Products. I'm responsible for our wash down and farm duty products. I've been in the role for about 12 months now.
Speaker: I came from a project management ah background. I ran a lot of product development projects prior to moving into this product management role.
Speaker: And I guess that's real. I've been with the company now for 15 years. so Started off as a quality engineer in a couple of our different manufacturing plants, and then through the years just moved into different roles. certainly So that's my story.
Speaker: I'm Randall Sorrels, and I'm the global head for food and beverage segment sales for NEMA Motors. And so I've been in this role now just under a year, but I've been with ABB since 2012. And then, of course, been in the industry much longer than we'll want to really talk about.
Speaker: But anyway, so my background is automation. So packaging and automation, PLCs, drives, motors, anything to do with the plant for automation.
Speaker: And so that's my background coming into this. I've worked in all different segments in all my career, but of course, anything food and beverage has always been a big part of that.
Speaker: ah Pharmaceuticals, poultry, many other, of course, direct food and beverage. So that's my background. and And then coming into this, being able to focus 100% in this sector is very important.
Speaker: Yeah. When I think ABB, I think of motors, obviously. And so in our industry, feed and grain handling, feed manufacturing, grain handling, it's really the heart of the entire facility. Your motor is the most really important thing. It needs everything, powers everything. you It's what you need.
Speaker: What if someone hasn't upgraded their motors in maybe 10 years, they haven't made any upgrades their system. What new have you guys been doing that might convince them that this is the time that it's important for them to upgrade now versus in the future?
Speaker: waiting another five years. So if you don't mind, before I answer we totally answer the products, which Brandon can cover, let me, if you don't mind, let me talk leading into that.
Speaker: So let's talk about how everything has changed in general. So at this point, we're sitting at a scenario to where, let's say close to 20%, definitely not exceeding much of that, is the motors are now controlled by VFDs.
Speaker: And so what that means is with the VFD, you can now start controlling your process rather than your process so much controlling you. So by this trend, been able to come to us over the years with technology, the cost of automation coming down in general, like I said, that's my entire background.
Speaker: It's allowed us to be able to take various technologies into other parts of the industry. And so we're looking at, at process controlled, but now we're actually starting to really look at process efficiency as well.
Speaker: And with all that, you've got the total cost of ownership that you must look at. So not only the inception cost of the units, the widgets itself, but what's that going to cost you for the entire life of that equipment?
Speaker: So that kind of leads it into where are some of our products. And Brandon, if you don't mind, maybe just taking it off with some of the stuff that you've released. Okay. This past year, with we've really been involved in a lot of product launches, really aiming for a lot of it being our brand new SP4 product line.
Speaker: So we're basically addressing a regulation that's not going to go into effect until June of 2027. It affects... it it affects the horsepower ratings from 100 to 250 horsepower, and it's going to require those motors to operate at an IE4 efficiency rating.
Speaker: We've gone ahead and taken the initiative to release this new SP4 product. which is IE4 rating. We've gone ahead and released it and it's from we've got basically one through 300 horsepower that we've gone ahead to because we know that customers are going to be looking into the future and starting to plan for,
Speaker: what application, what the application needs are. So we they have the ah ba ah the ability to go ahead and incorporate the high new high efficiency motor into those applications.
Speaker: So really excited about that. For people who might not know, what is this regulation, Link? What is happening with it? Yeah, it's I said, it's going to be June of 2027. It's going to require what from 100 to 250 horsepower to operate at an IE4 rating.
Speaker: It's going to be a mandatory. And can you think of anything else from a requirement standpoint? I think there's main requirements. If you don't mind, let me explain this with an analogy.
Speaker: So some of us that have been in industry for a number of years and starting date ourselves, this whole analogy might help a little bit. So if you think about fluorescent lights, so we used to have the big, fat, eight-foot-long, what was called it the T12 fluorescent lights.
Speaker: When the more efficient bulbs started coming onto the market, basically the discussion was as for every hour that we're still burning the T12 lights, it was costing money.
Speaker: Okay. And at that point, it became very costly to keep the T12 rather than talk about upgrading. And so that's where we are with the motors. So our technology with the motor, so the mandates are pushing us to, let's say a different type of light bulb, so to speak, but we're talking about motors, which use a lot more electricity than what light bulbs do.
Speaker: And so So this is taking us to where we need to use more efficient motors. And so that's what we've released. and Brandon's talking about is that IE3 that, so the IE3 was what the standard was for many years. IE4 takes it to the next efficiency band and then IE5, which you'll get to a bit is even on beyond that. Hopefully that analogy helps explain it a little bit. No, it's The Department of Energy that is, that sets these regulations.
Speaker: Yeah, it seems like it kills two birds with one stone, right? Because also, um bills, grain evolution, we're trying to be more efficient. Not only for the story to the public that we want to tell the money that you'll save in an industry that is increasingly getting tighter and tighter margins.
Speaker: So can you tell me a little bit about what, I guess, the upgrade process is? Say you already have a mill, need to get these new motors. How you suggest people start going about that process?
Speaker: One of the things that we made sure when we released this SP4 product, we made it to where it's it's a drop-in replacement. So it that follows the NEMA frames and ah we offer it in a standard mounting as well as the C-Face mounting.
Speaker: It's going to be really easy find ah similar product that meets application requirements. So where they just pull the old motor out and drop the new motor in and boom, they've got, they're starting savings.
Speaker: Awesome. Another thing I've noticed is, well, your background's in automation. You guys have been increasing and the information you can get from motor, the more it's data you can get. Can you talk a little bit about what kind of data people can get and how that can be useful for them running their own?
Speaker: Absolutely. And lot of it depends on how you're connected as well, because as we talked about that 20% that's have VFDs on it, we get information directly from the VFD, but we've taken it to the next step and we offer what's called a motor sensor, the smart sensor.
Speaker: to where it's a basically it's a health monitor that sits directly on the motor that's gathering information, start stops, vibration, or RPM, speed variations. So it's an excellent tool.
Speaker: But then, so that data is available to anybody that buys the smart sensor. But we take that then to the next step. So think of that as a as like a wrist-worn health monitor, okay, which is good.
Speaker: But we offer an additional service that's utilizing that data that kind of steps it up to an EKG because then we have doctors behind the scenes reading the charts so that they're interpolating that data. So it's data otherwise, but then they're adding the intelligence to it. So we can take it to where it's at that point, truly condition monitoring.
Speaker: Which is important, i think, because a lot of people, they get the data and then they have no idea what to do with it, what any of it means. That is correct. and Because data is data until you know what it means, right?
Speaker: So it's just, for example, i if if I have to go for MRI, they'll give me a ah DVD or whatever with those MRI images on them Yep. I don't have the skills to make heads or tails of it.
Speaker: And so that's where our additional service takes it on to being able to do truly read it and interpret that data. It's really cool, especially things like vibration monitoring, which I always found really fascinating because it's one of those things a lot of people think that they could just see or they could just think, but these sensors can so much more data about your facility than you'd ever be able to just monitor yourself.
Speaker: And when you're talking about condition monitoring, we don't, to see it, you've just got to have some c catastrophic, right? So what we're wanting to do is be able to detect it well before a failure and do predictive maintenance, right?
Speaker: So that's where you can't see it. You can't really fill it with human touch. That's why these sensors become so valuable in that predictive maintenance side of things.
Speaker: Unclanked downtime is very costly. Oh, yeah. Unclanked downtime is, it'll ruin your, it could ruin your Fordham. It really could. but Very easily. And in the at the bottom of the day, so every single one of our customers, all the end users, they're running money machines.
Speaker: They're stamping out $100 bills. And so it's very important to keep those money machines running. you know And so any downtime that you can prevent, okay, so you may have to pay a nickel more for this or that.
Speaker: But if it can prevent that downtime, what's it worth at that point? So then you start have to start looking at it. Can you afford to? to invest to that. And that's one of the big things that we're helping to work with our customers is being able to distinguish between what's an investment and what's an expense.
Speaker: What else have you guys been working on this over the last couple of years? Maybe even some future stuff you're working on. What do you guys got? Tell me all your secrets. For wash down products, we recently released a three leaded version of our FoodSafe product.
Speaker: Our standard FoodSafe has nine leads and we reduced that to a three lead on four 60 volt applications only. So what this does it reduces the installation time and also reduces the complexity of the the the installation by reducing the opportunity to accidentally misconnect the motor to the application.
Speaker: Another thing that we've just we're just now releasing, in fact, this week, is our brand new FoodSafe SP5 Plus. And what that is is that we integrated a ferrite assisted synchronous reluctance rotor into our standard winding.
Speaker: And what we're able to achieve is an IE5 efficiency rating. So we're really starting to explore a lot of different designs to really push that that efficiency level up.
Speaker: And so really excited about these new products that we're bringing to the market. Excellent. And while I have experts here, unless you have something to listen. Oh, I can go on and yeah and I'm more than glad to.
Speaker: So a couple other things too, i want to point out is that's new for us is, and I want to tag on to the discussion earlier about the SP4 product that he released.
Speaker: So the SP4, so as a standard part of that offering, and correct me if I'm wrong, Brandon, But so for anything that's like for the grain industry, you get into explosion applications, right?
Speaker: So by default in our standard product, we have that certification built into that product. So again, it's bolt-in, like you said, bolt-in replacement.
Speaker: But it's good for VFDs and non-VFDs and being able to also take care of those explosion proof applications. It was on a specific SP4 product line. It's our severe duty and it's rated for di two Class 2, and G. And then also we've Over the past year or so, we've been in the process of releasing ah series of products, which is called our integrated motor drive, so our IMD.
Speaker: So this is motors with VFDs directly coupled and attached to those motors. And so those and attack both the application, so again, controlling the application, but also the energy efficiency. So you're talking about the SP5 product that he mentioned with FoodSafe.
Speaker: So we're doing that same technology on those IMDs with the VFD on it. So it is literally the most efficient package on the market that you can have right now.
Speaker: hot But anyway, so that's a part of our portfolio that we're continuing to launch as well. I have experts here. so I have to ask, what are you guys excited about for the future?
Speaker: What do you think is the kind of the next big thing? What you think this industry is to see in motors in five years? Good question. Of course, what we're constantly pushing the envelope on is reliability.
Speaker: Because again, you can get cheaper widget out there, but if you're having to take it, replace it on a very regular interval, you especially if you have any ah social conscience as far as carve footprint.
Speaker: It takes a lot of energy and a lot of resources to first make any mode, right? So if you're having replace it on too regular of an interval, what's that doing? And that's before you even start talking about the energy consumption of the motor itself. And the downtime needing to replace and all that other kind of stuff. And the expertise and the resources.
Speaker: That's the other ways. So that's one of the areas that Brandon and his team is really bringing to us in the sales side is so that we can take to the customers is that reliability, making sure that we are building the most reliable product on the market, but doing so without sacrificing, but actually elevating the technology for us to leverage an energy efficiency.
Speaker: So combining those two And frankly, makes it very exciting for me to go out and talk to customers. Awesome. and So if people want more information, where should they go? solve the So of course, there's a number of ways to reach us, but we've got ah number of fantastic channel partners that handle our products.
Speaker: But the other great thing is we have a what's called a district office network. That's all over the country. So within literally an hour or two of anywhere. So I highly encourage everybody to go to abb.com and then drill down through the motors portion of that.
Speaker: As you can imagine, if with anything else, ah yeah URLs are a little hard to verbalize, but drilling down through abb.com is one of the best ways. And I'm sure you can exit, reach out and ask questions things like that. Absolutely, yes. but Because I've been to their website.
Speaker: Those motor numbers. Yeah. So the best thing is because we are not just a.com and good luck kind of company. We are all about being able to come in, sit down, have a conversation, walk people through, and making sure the right application and the right products come together for the right solution.
Speaker: And that's what we're all about because, again, We've been around a long time. We intend on being and www.dumpandrun.com is not the way we play things. You also have a great blog too, from what I remember. So people can find more information about things there. It's a good resource.
Speaker: We're on, we have a YouTube channel. We have, we're on various social media platforms and accessibility to our product information.
Speaker: Go into our, like I said, go like Randall mentioned, go into our website. You can find a lot of information available for each one of our product groups. Awesome. Thank you guys so much for talking to me today.
Speaker: I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks for the opportunity.
