The need to convert customers from super price sensitive buyers to intelligent, specification and purchasing entities remains an on-going challenge for any quality brand manufacturer of power transmission products. Both OEM manufacturers and MRO distribution channels will demand the lowest purchase price possible, often because the results of using a poorer quality product will only happen after the standard warranty period has run-out on a particular machine or replacement; therefore shifting the cost burden to the end user every time.

When cheap electric motors burn out, poor quality gears wear and cheap bearings seize, it is most often the buyer that says ‘at least they were cheap’ not the engineer, or the production manager and the maintenance department who are secretly delighted there is something for them to do, justifying their existence. Accountants also can’t argue with something that is broken and needs repairing, the money has to be spent.

The good news for quality manufacturers of gears and geared motors is the rising cost of manufacturing. With today's energy costs, and at the speeds and volumes of production, the high cost of downtime means stoppages cannot be tolerated and the need to reduce energy costs and show corporate efficiency targets are being driven by political and environmental reasons. It is hard to make a cheap motor and gearbox that is very efficient, to reach 95% efficiency in a mechanical gearbox and an IE4 super premium efficiency rating for an electric motor takes good design, top quality materials and highly advanced manufacturing techniques.

In some applications, where a geared motor is used rarely and is in a non-critical application in an unchallenging environment, then a cheap, inefficient geared motor might suffice. But for every other application, efficiency and reliability are absolutely vital, and this is true for the majority of industrial applications.

Bauer Gear Motors PMSM (permanent magnet synchronous motors) already fulfil the requirements of the future IE4 (Super Premium Efficiency) classification. The PMSM series employs a highly efficient design of rotor that integrates embedded permanent magnets made from rare-earth material rather than the squirrel-cage rotor found in more conventional induction motors.

This design offers a number of key benefits. It reduces heat losses from the rotor by 100%, total losses by approximately 25%, and increases total efficiency by 10% or more compared to the most efficient conventional motors. For the PMSM user, this improved performance translates into lower total cost of ownership, a reduction in CO2 emissions, and on-going savings that buffer against future increases in energy costs.