Powerflex 40 F005 fault

I have a few different power flex 40's that give me this fault at start up. These drives have a line reactor between the drive and motor of a Big *** Fans (fan). 2hp drive. They were installed around 2006 and have not worked properly since 2017 or earlier.
They are set up to run off the 0-10v source of a potentiometer. This is where I am seeing the fault of 2 particular drives. As soon as I cut the switch on and the pot is set at the minimum of 10hz the drives immediately bang 60hz then decels down to 10hz, but normally never makes it there because it pops up F005. A051-52 are set to 4 and A053 is 5 and A054 is 11. P038 is 2.

The Another drive gives the same F005 fault after it has been running for about 20-30 mins. I can clear the fault and it will take back off for a little while.

Real brand-name BAFs or just F's whose A's are B ?

For context, F005 is "Overvoltage", meaning the DC bus has gone over its maximum value either because of high line voltage or regeneration by load inertia.

For a nominal 480V drive, that fault occurs at 810V DC bus voltage, equivalent to a 575V AC incoming line.

Do you have a dynamic braking resistor installed ? Is it important to the application that the fans be quickly responsive to speed commands, or that they slow to a stop quickly ?

Start by actually measuring your phase-to-phase incoming voltage to the drives, and/or the DC bus voltage (be properly careful !). Parameter d005 also indicates the DC Bus Voltage.

A051-52 are set to 4 and A053 is 5 and A054 is 11. P038 is 2.

Click to expand...

A051 = 4 = Digital Input 1 set for Preset Frequency Select
A052 = 4 = Digital Input 2 set for Preset Frequency Select
A053 = 5 = Digital Input 3 set for Local
A054 = 11 = Digital Input 4 set for Jog Forward

All of those are default settings for the digital inputs.

P038 = 2 = Speed Reference is 0-10V Analog Input

Is anything wired to digital inputs 1-4 ? When you say you "cut the switch on", which exact switch do you mean ? Are you using Start at Power-On ?

My guess is that there's a loose wire or worn physical switch that is causing the drive to try to run at a Preset Frequency like 60 Hz or the Internal pot frequency, then it's switching to the external 0-10V potentiometer reference, and trying to decelerate too hard.

Check P037 Stop Mode. It should be set to 1 or 5, for Coast. Does the drive ever fault when you command it to Stop ?

Also check Parameter P040, the Deceleration Time. The default is 10 seconds, and I would set it much higher.

Also check Parameter A117, Bus Regulation Mode. The default is "Enabled", which ought to extend the deceleration if the bus is getting too high.

Ken Roach said:

For context, F005 is "Overvoltage", meaning the DC bus has gone over its maximum value either because of high line voltage or regeneration by load inertia.

For a nominal 480V drive, that fault occurs at 810V DC bus voltage, equivalent to a 575V AC incoming line.

Do you have a dynamic braking resistor installed ? Is it important to the application that the fans be quickly responsive to speed commands, or that they slow to a stop quickly ?

Click to expand...

No there is not, and the fans can coast to stop. Just need to be able to be adjusted by the potentiometer

Ken Roach said:

Start by actually measuring your phase-to-phase incoming voltage to the drives, and/or the DC bus voltage (be properly careful !). Parameter d005 also indicates the DC Bus Voltage.

Click to expand...

Incoming line voltage is 605-609-611

Ken Roach said:

Is anything wired to digital inputs 1-4 ? When you say you "cut the switch on", which exact switch do you mean ? Are you using Start at Power-On ?

Click to expand...

There is a jumper from 1 to 11 and #2 is the white wire for the start run switch.

upload image to url

upload image to url


My guess is that there's a loose wire or worn physical switch that is causing the drive to try to run at a Preset Frequency like 60 Hz or the Internal pot frequency, then it's switching to the external 0-10V potentiometer reference, and trying to decelerate too hard.

Ken Roach said:

Check P037 Stop Mode. It should be set to 1 or 5, for Coast. Does the drive ever fault when you command it to Stop ?

Click to expand...

P037 is set to 4 and I can NOt get the drive to go into program mode to change it. The drive faults within 2 seconds of starting up

Ken Roach said:

Also check Parameter P040, the Deceleration Time. The default is 10 seconds, and I would set it much higher.

Click to expand...

P040 is set to 25

Ken Roach said:

Also check Parameter A117, Bus Regulation Mode. The default is "Enabled", which ought to extend the deceleration if the bus is getting too high.

Click to expand...

A117 is set to 1

Here is a video
https://youtu.be/vIN9K51IdUc

I assume this is a 600V class drive (part number 22B-E######).

Keith

kamenges said:

I assume this is a 600V class drive (part number 22B-E######).

Keith

Click to expand...

22B-E3P0N104
On a side note I was able to use a contactor and actually run one of the fans without the drive and it ran just fine pulling 1.7amps.
So I already know with that drive, since I can not get it to go into program mode I will be replacing it.

There are a total of 5 drives that are giving me this fault all with the same set ups. 2 of them I can just reset the drive and they will run for a while and maybe fault out.

A few motors have open windings so on. Couple have locked up gearboxes.

We have warehouse fans with PowerFlex 40’s. They are not big ‘donkey’ brand because we don’t want to offend anyone. Over voltage immediately when trying to start has been very common when a drive fails. At that point we replace the drive and all is fine for a few more years.

5618 said:

We have warehouse fans with PowerFlex 40’s. They are not big ‘donkey’ brand because we don’t want to offend anyone. Over voltage immediately when trying to start has been very common when a drive fails. At that point we replace the drive and all is fine for a few more years.

Click to expand...

I do believe I am going to replace with them an Automation Direct GS2 2hp drives. We use those a good bit on our paint tanks for stirring. I may just replace all 9 because all these BAF were installed in 2006 so most of the drives are originals

Thanks for those details, especially the photo of the I/O wiring and the parameter values !

The thing that jumps out the most to me is Parameter P040 set to "25". The units for that parameter are 0.1 seconds, so a literal value of 25 = 2.5 seconds. The maximum value is 600, for 60.0 seconds.

Generally a PowerFlex just has to be Stopped in order to change parameters like Decel in "Program Mode". I have not experienced a drive that "wouldn't go into program mode". Maybe try pulling off the Enable jumper.

Since none of the Digital Inputs 1-4 are wired to anything, that suggests strongly that the drive isn't getting a Preset command. I like to jumper those kinds of terminals to DC Common, or program them to Unused, to avoid even the possibility of induced or stray voltages.

There could be something wrong/damaged/worn with the potentiometer wired as a voltage divider to the +10V source on Terminal 12.

A few motors have open windings so on. Couple have locked up gearboxes.

Click to expand...

Do you mean there are open windings and damaged gearboxes on the fans that you're running with the drives that fault ?

Not to be indelicate, but you can't expect any sort of VFD to control a motor properly if there are damaged motors and drivetrains.

Ken Roach said:

Do you mean there are open windings and damaged gearboxes on the fans that you're running with the drives that fault ?

Not to be indelicate, but you can't expect any sort of VFD to control a motor properly if there are damaged motors and drivetrains.

Click to expand...

Absolutely not, those are just other issues on other fans haha. I also will be replacing all potentiometers just for the fact of Age.

By chance are the fans already spinning, either forward or backward, when you give them a Run command?

jraef said:

By chance are the fans already spinning, either forward or backward, when you give them a Run command?

Click to expand...

No they are stopped.

One place I worked we had a number of these drives in one panel, often the engineers had this fault (as well as others) appear, replacing the drive cured the problem but we were replacing them at an abnormal rate, we tried all sorts of settings but never found what was causing the problem some of the drives would work for months (even one worked for 18 months before showing the fault). We had so many problems with these and ran out of stock so as a temporary fix we fitted a Mitsubishi on 1 and some other (cannot remember what make), these never failed so gradually replaced all of them, not saying the AB drives were faulty as we did use one "faulty" one on another system as a temporary measure and it worked. But in my experience we seemed to replace the AB ones far more often than any other VFD. We also had another system that was older but some time before the above system was installed this had the same drives but probably older version numbers, I wonder if the was a quality problem in the later ones we had. In our case it made no difference as we liked to standardise on Mitsubishi & Danfoss so replacing them was a no brainer.

Well here is an updated post but still the same issue. Replaced the PF40 with an Automation Direct GS2-52P0 575 2hp drive. Small basic drive. Hooked up the external potentiometer and start switch. Changed P1-P2-P3-P4 parameters. Ran on a test bench using a 1/2hp 575v motor and it worked just fine.

Installed drive in the BAF box hooked up all wires as they should be turn on start button start to move the Potentiometer and bam OV fault. The drive came with a disclaimer page saying this drive is prone to nuisance OV faults and they determined the issue was to turn OFF P6.04. As I did and still getting OV faults.

I have ran this fan using Just a contactor and it spins just fine.

I am going to swap the GS2-52P0 drive into another BAF box that has a bad Powerflex40 and see if the fault keeps occurring. If it does I may have to search for another type of drive.

The reason why I went with this GS2 drive is it is fairly cheap and we can get them pretty easily.

Are you cycling the POT speed faster and slower when this occurs? With a new drive of different make having the same issue, logic to me would say the you have regen of some form. Just put a small braking resistor on the drive and be done with it.

_Dock_ said:

Are you cycling the POT speed faster and slower when this occurs? With a new drive of different make having the same issue, logic to me would say the you have regen of some form. Just put a small braking resistor on the drive and be done with it.

Click to expand...

In the book for the GS2 drive when you get to the hs2-52 size it shows no available breaking resistors. I could try one from a lower size. I did read about these with the PF40 but none had any at all so.