During the past decade, significant improvements in reliability, quality, and efficiency have been engineered and manufactured into fan motors for unitary and packaged terminal heat pumps. These improvements have occurred in insulation systems, corrosion protection; bearing and lubrication life, field failure analysis, automatic assembly, vendor partnerships and parts per million (ppm) measuring systems, just to mention a few. From an efficiency perspective, some major factors are affordable low-loss lamination steel, better tolerance control, improved lamination designs, and much better design optimization through more sophisticated and accurate math modeling and computer analysis and synthesis.

The future promises to be even more exciting with revolutionary improvements in system efficiency and creature comfort through the marriage of electronics and motors that is, in fact, a reality today in selected applications. Improvements in quality and reliability will continue to accelerate as a natural fallout from the application of electronics, which means cooler running motors and less critical air gap, and as a result of automated assembly and process verification testlng. Yes, the "mature" motor technology is indeed experiencing dynamic change.

Units: I-P