Mousemania
Member
Hello everyone,
So I've been put on a project improving the electrical design of a given system, but I'm pretty new to the field of panel design and have mostly worked solely with PLCs. My biggest question is the best way to design heater and motor controls. Motor control seems much easier; I can just buy a motor controller and that covers everything hardware wise. But I'm uncertain about heater design. What they have right now is an SSR (solid state relay) controlling a heater, and upstream from that a contactor. But the SSR failed at one point, and it failed on, causing some catastrophic failure, so is using an SSR a bad design, or was that SSR just designed poorly? Is all I need for heater control a contact and a relay, and is there any reason to use an SSR instead of an EMR? I've also heard about PWM control, but my system doesn't need fine tuned control so I'm not sure I would need to use that. Any tips and advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance!
So I've been put on a project improving the electrical design of a given system, but I'm pretty new to the field of panel design and have mostly worked solely with PLCs. My biggest question is the best way to design heater and motor controls. Motor control seems much easier; I can just buy a motor controller and that covers everything hardware wise. But I'm uncertain about heater design. What they have right now is an SSR (solid state relay) controlling a heater, and upstream from that a contactor. But the SSR failed at one point, and it failed on, causing some catastrophic failure, so is using an SSR a bad design, or was that SSR just designed poorly? Is all I need for heater control a contact and a relay, and is there any reason to use an SSR instead of an EMR? I've also heard about PWM control, but my system doesn't need fine tuned control so I'm not sure I would need to use that. Any tips and advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance!