Opion Poll. best vfd's

The best VFD for me is about a lot more than robustness. I deal with a lot of European equipment and they come with a lot of Emerson, Lenze and Schneider drives and I tend to replace Lenze with Schneider. The number one for me is the supplier then the user friendliness of the drive. Yaskawa's drive I like because I can get to what I want in the manual very quickly and I can do whatever I want with the drive with minuets.
Schneider's menu system, which they're so proud of, I dislike a lot and their manual is seriously lacking but we have good suppliers who provide great service and give us reasonable prices. Emerson is a great drive but quite expensive around here and I will never forget the issue I had with it resetting certain parameters to default when I put it in keypad mode, that was just bad, bad design which I understand has been changed with their Unidrive M series. I considered Danfoss briefly but the dealers are morons, at least the two I was referred to by the Danfoss sales rep in Ontario who was very knowledgeable are very helpful and their website is pure ****, a nightmare to navigate. I recall sending them an email after the first time I visited their website for which I never received a reply :confused: I told exactly what I though of their website.

Omron ( I understand it's made by Hitachi) is pure garbage, I had nothing but problems with drives that are one year new and at the same time we have Omron drives that are 18 years old and still work well.

I've used Powerflex 40 once and can't remember anything about it but from the reviews here I just may give it a try or at least get a price for one and see how things go.

I also don't like to see drives without teir removable keypad.

I actually appreciate posts like this. Saves me from going through the pain. Schneider, omg their manuals are a pain, and their software, don't even get me started.

Used Emerson once. customer used to sell them, so he specked them. Afterwards, he said whoops.
 
I like Mitsubishi the best so far. The new 800 series are pretty sweet.

I like the Allen Bradley 700 series and 750 as well. Have not really used any other AB drives.

I have used Telemechanieque* Altivar a few times as well, we lost a lot of those but they where abused. Not to long ago I had to use a Schneider version of the Altivar in an emergency. It ran the motor good but I gave up on the device net card the manuals where terrible.

I have always thought they where all the same bird with different feathers for 80 or 90% of the applications. When you get into unbalanced loads or position control stuff I usually go with what I know best, The Mitsubishi.
 
"You are either creating the automation, or you are being replaced by automation", Some Dude

love this
 
Just for fun, who has used GS2 and GS3 Drives from Automation Direct? I have seen a few of these in the field, but have no idea how robust they are. One thing is certain, they are very economical. Who has experience and how were they?
 
Just for fun, who has used GS2 and GS3 Drives from Automation Direct? I have seen a few of these in the field, but have no idea how robust they are. One thing is certain, they are very economical. Who has experience and how were they?
Over the past 5 years, I have probably installed about 25 of the GS3 drives. To my knowledge, only 1 has been replaced and I am unsure of what the problem with it was. Overall I have been quite pleased with them for performance and price.

I am guessing they are re-branded Delta Electronic drives because of their resemblance and because AD has re-branded other Delta products.
 
Just for fun, who has used GS2 and GS3 Drives from Automation Direct? I have seen a few of these in the field, but have no idea how robust they are. One thing is certain, they are very economical. Who has experience and how were they?

I have not gone around and counted them but I would say we probably have 75 or 80 GS3 drives in operation on this ship.
And a lot of them are in some pretty inhospitable conditions.

We lose one to the smoke ghost once in awhile.
But in all fairness I have had to replace Allen Bradley, Siemens, ABB and Schneider drives also over the years on the many different vessels I have worked on out here.

Use what ya got, 90% of the time your just trying to make rotor go roundy-round anyway.......and they will all do that.
 
My general vote is Yaskawa, both for reliability and user friendliness. The AB 520 and 750 series are great as well (the 4M was a piece of junk, historically though most of their drives have been very good.) ABB is very reliable, customer service can be very poor, and I'm of course referring to real ABB drives, not a Baldor with different paint.
 
My favorite would be Eaton Cutler Hammer, but I have had good luck with many different brands.

I do NOT like Siemens and GE. I have had many problems with both.
 
We use SEW drives in nearly everything, and I think they are very easy to setup. In most cases they seem to last, although most of our conditions aren't very harsh at all.
 
I am in the sawmill industry now, although I have worked in many other industries in the past. Allen Bradley drives are the standard. We used to have a lot of 1336s, and still have a handful that are still chugging along. For a long time we installed PF700s but we are now choosing PF753s in new installations or where an upgrade is needed from a non 700 drive. The 750 series drives tend to be smaller and lighter for the same horsepower, and they have a lot of flexibility with the ability to installed various option cards.

I like AB drives for two reasons. First, we use almost exclusively AB PLCs and their drives integrate seamlessly via Ethernet. Second, the HIM on an Allen Bradley is the easiest to use. The parameters are displayed with both the number as well a text description of what the parameter is, so I don't have to have the manual handy to figure out which parameter I am looking at. With most of the other drives I have used, it just displays "P75" and the value so I have too look up what P75 is. This becomes very handy when I am trying to monitor what a motor is doing, or I need to tweak a process slightly.

With all that said, the best drive is the one that readily available locally, reliable and easy to install and maintain. In our case that is Allen Bradley, even though they tend to be a little more expensive. Downtime for us is way more expensive than a drive ever could be.
 
ABB is my favorite. Used for over a decade (100 or more) and less than 3 failures on existing drives.
Yasakawa is a strong contender.
 
Speaking of Vacon, I was told that these are good drives. But yesterday customer had a Vacon X4 go bad that was only 4 years old. Run hourmeter of the drive showed only 111 hours. Something fried on the output bridge. That isn't very good.

I have heard of Mistibushi drives that handle way over what they are rated for. I know of an application where they are using a 200HP drive and using single phase input and starting (6) 20hp motors across the line. That drive must be built like a beast.

I would say that for some companies, like Allen Bradley, you pay extra money just for the name.

Fuji Electric hasn't been in Unites States in the drive world real long yet. But they make some good drives for a good price.
 
For the guys running PowerFlex 4's and 40's.

On our vfd's that run 24/7, I can only get 3 years of life or so. The AB rep says they have a cheap internal power supply. I didn't really did any deeper. I know it's not environmental because it's clean and air conditioned.

Currently coming up with a replacement plan. Leaning towards 525's or I may ditch AB all together. I'm not a big fan of their support compared to others.
 

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