DWH Technical Topic: Drives are overwhelming

By Clarence Klassen, P. Eng. 

Recently I attended a drive training session with a group of integrators and electrical maintenance personnel from a wire and cable plant. They were designing and commissioning an unwind. The hope was that the drive would be easy. They had even purchased the “winder package” to make everything simple.

Needless to say, they found the drive complicated. The word used was "overwhelming" with the large number of parameters. It took a long time to start the drive. Then to get the direction right. Then to get the speed right. Then to get the tension and diameter right.

A lot of discussion took place in the session. The drive vendor talked about how long it took him to learn the full system from start to finish. In the end, there were not a lot of parameters that we would be willing to give up.

I have found over the years that every new drive involves quite a learning curve. That is for an electric product with only two outputs – RPM and torque.

No short answers from me.