Ac drive maintanence

You are already on the right lines, I think:

1. Keep it cool - the main culprit for early ife failure is overheating. This can be by avoided by careful cleaning. Avoid blowing compressed air through cooling fans to clean heatsinks as this can overspeed and damage bearings. (Take off or insert in baldes so it can't spin). Also, check the fans running hours vs design life, if you're in a 'dusty' environment change them early. If you wait for failures you get localised heating which can lead to component failure even if the VFD does not go to overtemperature.

2. Keep it clean - try to keep contaminants out of area where the electronics are housed, these potentially can short out or cause corrostion, particulary at ICs etc where tolerances are tight amd connections are surface mounted.

3. Keep it dry - similar to 2., ensure VFD is dry when starting particularly if you have humid environment as condensation is a killer by shorting and corrsion too.

4. Check main circuit capacitors, when the DC link capacitance falls, peak currents get higher as does VFD temperature. Replace at manufacturer's recommendation if modular.

These are the main points I advise from my experience, transistors wearing out its normally better to replace whole unit normally, in my opinion (can happen at 5-15 years depending on rating and load etc.

Hope this helps, clean and cool is great for electronics!!

There are some great books out there on RcM. The question, "how to get everyone on board?" Having one person trying to do this makes for a frustrating shift (s).

Put a group together, management, supervisor, maintenance and operators.

Identify critical motors that the operation relies on. If there is a backup they are still critical.

Determine your goals. Percent of availability verses down time of plant.

Install someone to be in charge of the predictive/maintenance schedule. This person should have some knowledge in vibration analysis, bearings, greases/oils, alignments, foundations, resonance and plant operations.

Dollars to begin this program can be borrowed from plant operations, maintenance and asset purchase. The accountants will need to make an additional slot to help track your success. The column will be in the negative zone for the first few years, however the bottom line of the plant will reflect your efforts.

The above guides need not be for a large facility. This plan can be used for your car. Things like oil changes, air filter, tyres and grease jobs. It's been shown that 10% extra care creates a 33% increase in useful life of a machine. This will result of one new machine every three years. Great return on investment.

Guidance may always be found in the manufacturer's maintenance manuals supplied with the equipment.

Don't forget to check the power connections, clean & tight.