Baldor Electric Company, based in Fort Smith, Arkansas, a leading North American manufacturer of industrial electric motors, drives and generators, celebrates its 85th year of business in March 2005. The company was founded in St. Louis, Missouri in 1920 by Mr. E.C. Ballman and Mr. E. Doerr.

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The flow of cartons on our conveyor line is so crazy our workers are struggling to keep up like Lucille Ball in the candy factory. To better control the flow by using speed adjustment, I'm adding an inverter. Do I also need to add premium efficient motors or will my older motor work?

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Baldor has extended the versatility of its low-cost brushless AC servo drive, MicroFlex, with the addition of configurable anti-resonance filters. The software upgrade allows machine builders to implement filters to combat mechanical problems using the drive's DSP (digital signal processor) - providing a means of optimising machine productivity without additional expense.

As energy costs rise, conservation is becoming an important factor in many purchasing decisions. Since energy costs account for more than 94 percent of usage costs over a 10-year operating period, taking power consumption into account is particularly important in industrial motor selections.

high-integrity motion control system, capable of positioning patients to within half a millimetre, is currently being commissioned for commercial operation at Europe's first proton beam therapy facility - the Rinecker Proton Therapy Centre in Munich.