Powerflex 525

Hello Folks,
I hope all of you are keeping well. Im doing a project with a couple of students at the local community college - were trying to get a P525 working. We have a three phase motor connected - no mechanical load current is about 0.5A. We can turn on a mechanical brake and get the current up to 3A. We dont leave the brake on for too long cause we dont want to damage the motor.
We know P033 is the motor overload current which we set at 1 AMP.
Is it possible to get the VFD to kill the motor if it goes above the P033 and better still can we kill the motor and turn on one of the digital outputs to turn on a light.
Any advice is defo appreciated.
Tim

I'm not intimate with the PF525, but older PowerFlex drives had settings with the words "shear pin" that accomplished what you want. I would challenge your students to study the manual and figure out by hands on trials how to accomplish the requirement.

Thank you Okie. I read your email out the students and they groaned! LOL
ALSO - in order to program or monitor a powerflex - Do we have to use connected components workbench or is it possible to use Drivetools?
Tim

tim_callinan said:

Thank you Okie. I read your email out the students and they groaned! LOL
ALSO - in order to program or monitor a powerflex - Do we have to use connected components workbench or is it possible to use Drivetools?
Tim

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CCW has been praised for working with drives (PLCs, not so much), but I don't have first hand experience with it. If there is a keypad and display, do it the old fashioned way.

If the students complain about RTFM, they will not enjoy this line of work!

tell your students this.

i will do them no good to just get by in the class, they need to know what they are doing and why. if they fail, that's part of learning.

i have at least a dozen manufacturing companies within 90 minutes of where i live and they have been looking for controls technicians and controls engineers for over a year. they offer average pay for beginners, but they have no luck.
they hire someone out of college or school who talked a good talk and got hired, BUT!; the company that hired them soon learned they really didn't know anything, so they terminated them. the pay range is 70-120K. So they not only need to get hired, but they must be able to deliver quality work also.
regards,
james

tim_callinan said:

Thank you Okie. I read your email out the students and they groaned! LOL

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This reminds me of the second time I had to program a PLC (still in University) and it was the first one that you'd program with an actual computer.
When I went to ask the teacher something about it, he directed me to a shelf that was about 3 feet wide and said "The answer's in there.".

It was one of the best damn lessons I was ever taught. Let's be honest, the most valuable thing one can learn is an ability to learn new things fast and as needed. And knowing how to sift through a manual is critical to be able to do that. One day your students will realise this. Speaking of which, better send a thank you email to that teacher.

At least these days we can generally download a PDF and search for keywords. 20 years ago it was a different story.

I had one old timer working for me who had a whole box of paper manuals in the back of his truck. Some were 10+ years old. He was just as happy googling things, but felt comfortable knowing he had a manual for most things he had to deal with sitting a metre away at all times.

tim_callinan said:

Thank you Okie. I read your email out the students and they groaned! LOL

Click to expand...

As James posted above, everyone is going to fail. I called my boss one day when I was in the field trying to get a new analog I/O module to provide proper values and he told me to get the manual; he was busy. No internet because the OEM wouldn't allow access, so hotspot and download a 137 page manual just to read one paragraph. The module whipped my butt that day and later at another OEM I wrote a training module (PP presentation) so someone in the plant wouldn't have to go through this again. I think about my signature below all the time--failure tells one what not to do and what doesn't work, therefore revealing more of the path to success.
When an integrator sends someone to a site and that person has created the project, that person better be able to troubleshoot their own work and get that tool running for the customer. I'm at a supplier now and when they send me out to the plant floor with my laptop they expect me to solve their problems quickly. If one is unable to do this then they will find someone that is capable.
I wish your students a long and successful career in programing, troubleshooting and automation. Good luck and have a great holiday season!!

A486 is the Shear Pin Level, A487 is the Shear Pin Time.

Thank you for the replies. I have a couple of test students working away (Guinea Pigs) and they got that working. I do have a couple of other questions for you lads if thats OK. This is my basic plan on the VFD lab using the powerflex 525. I cant assume the students will have seen a PLC so I cant really get them to use a PLC unfortunately. Thats a different course. The VFD lab will be appox 8 hours max of time. Is this a good set of objectives and/or am i missing anything important?
Thanks,
Tim

VFD
1) Make connections to VFD
2) Start/Stop the motor with dial speed control on front panel
3) Using parameters control the acceleration and decceleration
4) Wire up external buttons Start/Stop and reverse direction of the VFD
5) Set an overcurrent setting on the VFD to stop the motor if the motor current gets too high and also turn on an error light.
6) See if its possible to use DC braking using an emergency stop button?

tim_callinan said:

4) Wire up external buttons Start/Stop and reverse direction of the VFD

Click to expand...

In addition, make sure they have some potentiometers for controlling speed. They really need to understand analog control and which terminal is what on a pot. They also need to understand how to a pot where a Clockwise rotation speeds up the motor, and then have them change it where the Clockwise rotation then slows down the motor.

I think those are all very worthwhile scenarios and ones I implement on a daily to weekly basis. Very core fundamentals of drive functionality.

It could be worth getting them to set up some kind of comms with it, either modbus or ethernet or something.
I came out of Uni very confused about comms methods

That's right, I established a connection via Modbus, it was quite stable! I would reuse this