This post is brought to you by Applied Motion Products.
As part of our commitment to quality and durability in our products, we often use life testing as a means of determining how our products will survive when subjected to extended periods of stress or adverse conditions. In the case of motors intended for use in the splash zone, we wanted to do more than just subject them to the 15 minutes or so of high pressure spray required to achieve the IP65 rating. We wanted to see how our motors would fair when subjected to an extended period of water being splashed on them.
So a few years ago we built a rain simulation chamber in our lab to test the lifetime reliability of our IP65 rated motors, and exactly one year ago we put an IP65 rated motor with encoder into that chamber to see how it would hold up. We are happy to report that after a year of continuous exposure to splashing water the motor is still going strong. No water has infiltrated the seals and the integrity of the IP65 rating remains completely intact.
As can be seen from the picture below, the cosmetic appearance of the motor and shaft has been affected, which is due to lime and mineral scale that’s built up from the tap water used inside the test chamber. But the motor is still running, without having skipped a beat even once in the past year. Who knows how long it will go?
One interesting fact is how many gallons of water have been added to the test chamber to replace the water that evaporates from it over time.