I worked on finishing my VFD install this weekend. I started Saturday off going striper fishing with some friends (no luck), but was able to wire in a new 30A breaker and twistlock receptacle in the afternoon. I wired up the plug to the end of he SOOW and that took care of that end.
Next was the remote panel wiring, which was fairly straightforward. The important thing is to keep track of what wire you are using for each connection. I labelled the three cables and made sure I wrote down the color and cable number for each connection as I made it.
Now on to the signal cables at the VFD end. Here I was pretty conscious of the wire routing. I wanted to keep these signal cables as far away from the power wires as possible to minimize electrical interference. That's also why I'm using shielded cable. Once they were all landed I tied the shield drain wires together and crimped them into a ring lug so I could land it on one of the ground terminals.
I still had some rectangular cutouts in the enclosure that I had to fill or seal somehow so I tackled those next. I had some ABS sheet in my plastic scrap bin, so I cut it to fit and attached it with 3M VHB, which is amazingly strong stuff. On the top piece, I put a hole in that lined up with one of the cutouts and made a cut from the edge to the hole. This way I could get the VFD remote cable out of the enclosure.
That pretty much completed the control cabinet wiring and build. I checked the entire wiring job against my schematic, torqued all the connections and sealed up the enclosure. Then it was time to plug it in, hit the master on switch and it worked! Contactor engaged, pilot light came on, fans started whirring (I had to adjust the thermostat) and the VFD started right up!
I spent a little time setting the initial programming, getting the digital inputs and outputs setup and tweaking the motor ramps, and it works! It's really nice when something like this ends up like you imagined. I put the mill right to work making a pocket in a plastic enclosure for the VFD remote.
I mounted it to the right of the ProtoTRAK control and called it good!
So, I'm finally done with this project and can get to sling some chips around! I'm sure I'll be playing with the VFD programming as I use it. Right now I have the limits set to 30Hz to 60Hz and am playing with the braking settings. The VFD is really nice and smooth, not noisy at all. I'm liking it a lot. I shot a quick video showing the whole thing in operation. Sorry for the shaky handheld phone video!
[video=youtube_share;Rz2HN9vjK7E]http://youtu.be/Rz2HN9vjK7E[/video]