Has anyone experienced the race of a bearing you are cutting apart for fault inspection becoming magnetized? Is there the possibility of electrical current passing through the bearing, but not introducing electrical fluting? Is there a specific time of operation before fluting begins to show? What spectral data would identify a motor hunting its center? Would an elevated One Times motor speed in axial direction signify this if alignment and resonance has been ruled out? Finally, would the bearings balls show a pattern of tumbling and a wear path in an axially loaded state if the motor were hunting operational center?

J.B.,
I don't have answers to your other questions but I have had bearing races become magnetized when cut apart for analysis. In fact most if not all of them do and I believe it is caused by the cutting process because it happens in bearings that are not from motors and have not been near electrical sources. It could be that they become magnetized while in operation but I don't know how.

WOW... You need to number all those questions.
1.Yes
2.Yes
3.Yes. When the electricity is at a Voltage/Amperage that is high enough to cause arcing.
4.No. Not Time Related at all
5.I can't answer that with certainty but "I" would suspect a higher than normal Axial Reading and if I had a bearing from the motor I would liik for Axial Loading of the bearing.
6.Define Tumbling. If there is axial loading then I would suspect that the motor is indeed hunting it's electrical center. You could see if it is by starting the motor without being coupled and if it moves then you probably have narrowed the problem down a bit.

Dear Dataware,
Part of our testing is to run white metal bearing motors solo before installation and most of them would hunt magnetic centre.I have discussed it with our fitters and all of them said when they align they find the centres by bump test before aligning.Onsite we found that the ones that have hunting problems tend to have a beat frequency or a pulsating 1X RPM in tha axial direction.

I have not checked this for ball bearing motors and find the question interesting as I have come across many beat frequencies on site.However, ball bearing clearances are pretty small and one would amagine the pull to be to one side only.

JB,
You have a chain of question. Beside the magnetization problem, the rest is best to apply bearing track marking analysis, which can give more specific toward problem.