Micro Fiber brushes | Spring Loaded Carbon Block Brush | |
Wear | Virtually no friction or wear, lasts for service life of equipment (no friction to shaft). | Wears out due to friction |
Shaft Grounding Effectiveness | Continuous discharge – no degradation over time. | Decreases after only a few weeks due to coating buildup on shaft. Must be cleaned to restore contact. |
Surface Rate | Surface rate and RPM do not effect performance or wear, tested at 20,000 RPM and high surface rate applications of 180 f/s. | Higher surface rate/RPM results in faster wear and replacements, RPM limitation, less effective at higher RPM. |
Create Dust | No measurable dust collected or wear observed (less than 0.025mm ) in 10,000 hours. | Carbon block wear on shaft creates dust particles based on surface rate of shaft. |
Life | Lasts for service life of equipment – nothing to wear out, estimated life is greater than 200,000 hours. | Depends on material but may last for as little as 3 -5 months. |
Replacement | Never needs to be replaced. | Replacement needed frequently (requires equipment shutdown). |
Motor/equipment shutdown lost production | Never | Periodic for maintenance or replacement needed. |
Periodic Shaft maintenance | Never | Periodic maintenance needed to clean/remove oxidation/coatings/contamination shaft. |
Brush maintenance | Never | Periodic maintenance needed to clean/remove coatings/contamination brush contact surface. |
Works if oil/grease gets on shaft | Yes | No |
High frequency VFD currents | Micro fiber is optimized for high frequency current discharges produced by high speed VFD dv/dt pulse width modulation (PWM) switching. | Not as effective for high frequencies. |
Complex to install | Simple screw -on brackets – mounts direct to end bell. Self centers for easy alignment, slim design minimizes shaft length requirement. | Complex bracket installation and alignment, may require machining for bracket installation, may require over 1″ of usable shaft length. |
Performance Guarantee | Bearings on motors up to 400 kw guaranteed not to fail from bearing fluting caused by electrical bearing discharges. (L10 Guarantee) | None |
Load on shaft | No load on shaft – micro fibers “lightly” touch shaft surface | Spring load on shaft, causes drag and decreases motor efficiency |
Effective conductive surface contact | Three to four times greater, hundreds of thousands of micro fibers surround shaft | Only 15 -30% contact on slipping surface. |