Both rotors and stators are made up of laminations of relatively thin steel
(sheetmetal).
At some point in production, the individual sections of the laminations for
both rotors and stators would be disk-shaped.
The internal fans on TEFC totally enclosed fan cooled motors may be
fabrcated from steel disks. Generally, the external fans on small (under 10
HP) TEFC models are plastic, IME.

Some time when a motor is apart, notice that the stack of disks of the rotor
are arranged in a helix-like pattern.
A circle of holes arranged around the center/shaft hole go from end-to-end
thru a rotor to provide cooling air paths with air passing thru the rotor.

Some of the orange painted stacks (foreground of picher) include round disks
that have a circle of punched holes around the center hole (almost looks
like a screw-on oil filter base plate), are fairly regularly seen as rotor
laminations in common AC induction motors.

Thicker mostly square plates could be formed into the foot/base plate that's
typically welded to the cylindrical case section.

I don't recall seeing square case Baldor motors, but I have seen quite a few
Reliance industrial motors with square cases, hence the stator laminations
outer dimensions were square shaped.

What seems odd to me is that so much material, layed out the way it is in
the pitcher, all needs human handling.
I wonder if this area isn't just for custom motor orders.
Human handling/manipulation (picking, sorting, counting, placing etc) from
point-to-point and so on, shouldn't be required for normal production.

BTW, the picture caption doesn't expressly state that motors are being made
in the St. Louis plant, but I suppose it's a fair guess.

--
WB
..........
metalworking projects
www.kwagmire.com/metal_proj.html


"Ignoramus28480" wrote in message
...
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/01/bu...n.html?_r=1&hp

I have to admit that, by looking at this photo, I do not recognize any
parts at all and have never seen them as parts of electric motors.

i