Vfd Shopping

[95ttoplt1]

I've read a bit on here and around the web on them, and made a trip to my local industrial electrical store. I had read that the automation direct VFD's were reasonable and reasonably priced. I took that info into the store, and the first thing the guy at the counter said was "don't buy that junk!". He said that although you might get lucky and get one that works for a reasonable amount of time, that it generally wasn't the case. He said they had commercial customers bring them in with issues rather regularly. Although I don't intended to use my machine at a commercial level, a little extra up front to avaoid head aches down the road is money well spent to me.

He quoted me for a Omron 3g3mx2-ab022-v1 to run my 2j2 head Series 1 CNC. I've read through the specs and it seems like it comes equipped with even more features than the Automation Direct piece, and I have a window to throw it through locally if it fails haha.

Anyone have experience with this piece? It seems that it can speed monitor in closed loop with out any external tach, is that true?

Would I be able to integrate this into my CNC control to control spindle speed and start stop?

Oh and price is $478 2.2 kw constant(3hp) 5hp max. My current machine is 2hp continuous 3 hp for 30min

https://www.ia.omron.com/products/family/3164/feature.html

 

[JimDawson]

That is an interesting reaction from the counter guy. In many years of using AD GS2 drives, I have not had one failure, including those I have installed in many industrial applications.

The Omron is probably a Vector drive, so yes it would monitor the speed in a closed loop with out a tach. The AD equivalent would be a GS3 series drives. Having a local store front to complain to is worth something.

Almost any VFD would integrate into the CNC control for Start/Stop, For/Rev, and spindle speed control. The only issue would be on the CNC controller end; would it be able to output the proper signals? Normally for speed control you would need a 0-10V analog signal from the controller. Feedback would be a good thing too, normally there is some kind of a tach output from the VFD to tell the controller where the speed is at. But with a closed loop on the VFD, it could be used as set-and-forget.