OT: AC Drive question

orwell2

Member
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Join Date
Nov 2005
Location
Massachusetts
Posts
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I have a bunch of ABB, ACS600, AC drives, in stock that have been in storage for several years and are in need of having the capacitors reformed. One was recently installed and let the smoke out in a dramatic fashion. I have a procedure from ABB but I am looking for any advice or recommendations to accomplish this in a safe and effective way. Thanks in advance.
 
ABB has the equipment to perform this procedure
I recommend that you use thm if possible.
 
How does this apply to ac drives in general? I know some places used to swap the spare drive with the running drive every 2 years or so or install new caps every so often.

I have pretty much all AB drives so is there a similar reforming procedure for ab drive that have been stocked for a long time?

Is there a need to do a time based cap replacement on in service drives after so many years?
 
ABB are saying that the Dielectric of the capacitors fall away when not in use for an extended period.
They may be the only drives that has this issue or the only supplier that admits the problem.
Drives can blow up if this is not done every two years of non use
I have no Idea about other VFD Manufacturers
 
I know on the Leeson/AC Tech drives we use they advise to power up the drive for 8-12 hours if it's been sitting for over a year to reform capacitors before putting it into production.
 
@ DickDV

Is the primary process to power up the drive without running it. ie charging the dc link without firing the IGBT's.

How do you determine how long to reform the caps if you do not have direct documentation? I would assume the years or months on the shelf would fall into the equation but I would also think you would factor inn drive size or cap size somehow?

I have never seen any docs discussing this for ab drives.
 
I haven't seen any precise procedures or variations due to drive or power size recently. I may be overly cautious but I try to power up the drive for a half hour or so on half voltage first, then power up on full voltage for an hour.

I don't know how that compares to manufacturers' instructions but it works for me. Fortunately, it doesn't come up very often. Almost nobody keeps spare drives around anymore.
 
Dick how do run them at half voltage? Transformer or variac? For a 480 vac drive.

Also why do you think nobody stocks spare dives anymore? How do they keep their plant running when a drive fails? I ask because from my experience the distributors don't stock many drives now either.

We have to stock a spare for almost all out drives as they are common dc bus and from the factory normally have 1 week lead time minimum and that just does not work for us.

Curious to see what other are doing though?
 
I'm a bit curious about this now. We also have spares for most of our drives used on our critical processes. Some due to lead times, others due to them being either obsolete or near it. Some have been sitting for years boxed up on the shelf for that "just in case" moment at 3am. I've got many that I've powered up, set parameters, then powered down and stored ready for production. I'd hate to change out a failed drive just to have the new one blow up on me as I try to get production back up and running one night (or day even).
 
I have know this to be done for quite some years but I never knew the details of the procedure. IIRC these is a similar method for DC drives that should be performed yearly.
 
Quoting from the Siemens Micromaster manual
Period of storage 1 year or less - no reforming is required
1-2 years old - Apply power to the inverter 1 hour before giving the run command
2-3 years old - use a variable AC supply, apply 25% for 30 minutes, increase to 50% for 30 minutes, 75% for 30 minutes, 100% for 30 minutes - preparation tome 2 hours
3 years and over as above except each step for 2 hours - preparation time 8 hours
 
Very good topic. I have a bunch of AB 70's and 700's that I will be bringing back online in a couple of weeks. They have been sitting at least a year. I have sent an email to our AB guru and will post an answer later.
 

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