Amit Deokule, Director of Sales and Marketing, Nord, shares insights on the importance of drives and motors in the cement industry and the benefits they offer for plant maintenance and productivity.

Tell us about the role of drives in cement plant machinery.
Cement manufacturing is a continuous process. Considering the market demand the plant must be in operation 24×7. These plants are located in remote areas, hence, getting spares in breakdown conditions is one more challenge for the cement industry. So, in this situation drives play a pivotal role. With use of reliable drives like Nord, which are designed for heavy duty application the uptime of cement plant machinery is high and ultimately the plant’s overall efficiency increases.
Secondly, as Nord offers products with our patented design of ‘Unicase,’ the cost of spares, oil refilling cost and downtime of machines decreases drastically. Hence, selecting good products is important for maintenance of cement machinery.

Tell us about the portfolio of drives and motors that you offer to the cement industry.
Nord is a German multinational and has been present in this market for the last 50+ years. We keep on adding products in our basket as per the market demand. We have designed and developed energy efficient products, which will require various applications of material handling in the cement industry. Today, we can offer from 0.12kW to 200kW motor with various combinations of helical,helical worm, helical bevel gearboxes with a torque range of up to 100kNm and also the heavy-duty gearbox range with torque range up to 300KNm. Considering the demand in the heavy industry, there are some new products already in the development stage.

As machinery in cement plants is advancing with time, how do you accommodate the change in drives for the betterment of functionality in cement plants?
Being a German company, we believe in offering efficient and futuristic technology to customers. Globally, we have stopped offering IE1 and IE2 class motors and offer more energy efficient IE3 and IE4 motors and soon IE5 efficiency motors will be available in a complete product range. As the world is adapting to Industry 4.0, hence, we have made our products suitable for new edge technology and we can get all kinds of data like temperature, speed, vibration, bearing life etc., from our product, process through our drives and store on the cloud for periodic analysis sitting at remote locations. This will be useful for the maintenance team to keep their machinery operative and avert breakdowns with proper and accurate feedback in advance.

How can drives by your organisation help cement manufacturers achieve better productivity and energy efficiency?
NORD products are designed for longer productive and efficient life spans. From the design stage we follow the highest standards of manufacturing geared motors. Gears are designed as per DIN3990 standard, gear housing is made with GG 20 or GGG40 material with best class of FEM standards. We offer our gear housing with our patented ‘UNICASE’ design, which leads to less joints and less sealing surfaces, meansing a virtually leak-proof design. Secondly, UNICASE design increases the shock taking ability of gear boxes, hence, no fear of breakdown. We offer high efficiency motors (IE3 and IE4 Class) with advanced VFD support that helps to consume optimum power in operation. With all these features, cement manufacturers can achieve best efficiency in their production process.

Which machinery of the cement plant is the most challenging and how do you overcome the challenge?
In a cement plant, there are five crucial cement manufacturing machines, namely, cement rotary kiln, shaft kiln, cement vertical mill, cement ball mill and cement roller press. Earlier with a limited product range, we were not able to cater our products for mill applications, but with new product additions in our MAXXDRIVE series we can offer solutions in all midsize cement mills and very soon we will offer a complete product basket for even large size cement plants.

How often do you service and audit your installations at the cement plant?
Nord products are designed for a longer productive and efficient life. Our products are suitable for 24 hours of high shock loads in a harsh atmosphere. They are a reliable drive for any industry. Because of the best design standards, world class manufacturing processes, our products consume optimum oil and energy. With this feature we proudly say Nord offers a fit and forget product. For over the last 10 years, our service spares business has been negligible. That means once you select Nord products with the correct procedure, servicing is not needed regularly and no regular operational audits are required for the gear box.

Tell us about the upcoming innovations from your organisation that would be beneficial for cement plants?
At Nord, with scientific market research we keep on adding the products. Considering cement plants, we add products in our MAXXDRIVE product range. Soon we will offer the Maxxdrive from 5kNm to 40o kNm, with all options like extended housing, J mounting, customised base plate bigger product range in IE4 and IE5 motors.