The Steamboating Forum

I'm looking for a 5hp VFD for my lathe. I was considering Leeson brand's http://www.clrwtr.com/PDF/LEESON/LEESON-SM2-Series.pdf A friend said that Leeson does not manufacture the drive but get it from some other manufacturer and just put Leeson label. I didn't want to end up with a cheap Chinese VFD with a US brand name label.

Lenze AC-Tech drive ... 220v single phase in, 220v 3-phase out. This drive also has enough logic controls that I was able to completely remove all the contactors & relay logic, much of which was non-functional on my 15' lathe.

This unit has increased in price by 60% since I bought it in 2008. Others may well be more cost-effective.

https://www.wolfautomation.com/manufact ... hase-input

- Bart

Thank you Bart for the response.

AC Tech was purchased by a German manufacturer called Lenze. AC Tech is used to manufacture Leeson brand VFDs. My source was not sure if that is the case after Lenze purchase.

Lenze has increased the price of old AC Tech sub micro drives including the SCF series. All the AC Tech products will be obsoleted in a year or 2. That's why they increased the price to discourage people who plan to use these older drives.

My source recommended the SMVector series. http://www.actechdrives.com/PDF/Lenze/L ... Drives.pdf It looks to have more features too.

These are excellent drives for the price. Have them on two machines and they have performed flawlessly for 10 years daily usage. The front control section can be removed and mounted on the exterior of an enclosure with an option cable.

https://www.automationdirect.com/adc/Sh ... )/GS2-25P0



-Ron

That's a really good price for a 5hp VFD. It's probably the lowest that I have seen. What brand is it?

I already purchased an AC Tech/Lenze brand SMVector VFD.

http://shop.actechdrives.com/AC-Tech-Le ... n02txb.htm

Make sure your drive is rated for single phase input if you're going to use it that way at full power. Of course, I've never seen mine reporting much over 10% of full power, but perhaps w/ some negative rake tooling ....

The input filtering capacitors need to be extra large and heavy duty for single phase input; derating the drive gets one to the same place, generally.

- Bart

dan_barber wrote:That's a really good price for a 5hp VFD. It's probably the lowest that I have seen. What brand is it?

It has the "Automation Direct" Logo on it. Who actually makes it, I have no idea.

These have all sorts of parameters for torque boost, braking, motor protection etc. Can take a remote analog signal for remote spindle speed control, remote contacts etc. The best feature is they are very easy to program. I've used Fuji drives as well and they can be a pain to format and their manual is terrible. The automation direct VFD manual is very easy to follow, even comes with a quick step programming guide.

The only issue I ever had using one of these is the motor wouldn't stop, and it turned out it wasn't the drive. We are on the end of a main trunk line from the power company and our voltage spikes occasionally. I called Automation direct ( A person actually answers the phone) and asked them why the drive wouldn't turn the motor off. He said the drive is protecting itself from excessive back EMF voltage from the motor spinning down. Sure enough, I checked the incoming voltage at the wall and it was 126 VAC. Called the power company and they came out and installed some caps at the transformer to tame it. Smart little drives. Some external braking resistors would have probably eliminated this, but I just set the motor spin down on a bit higher time period to prevent having to use them.

I run standard 3 phase motors up to 95 Hz without damage.

-Ron