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Active Contributor

Join Date: Jan 2011
Posts: 10

Motors Burning

03/10/2011 1:46 AM

Hi,

Rececently I installed a Falcon which is being driven by a 2.25Kw Motor through a gearbox. This motor is VSD driven, Insulation class is H, RPM is 1425, Voltage is 415. A week ago I lost the first motor, of course I went through all the protection settings afterwards and all seemed well. I installed a second motor which got burnt again.

Could anyone help solve this problem?

Regards.

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#1

Re: Motors Burning

03/10/2011 2:16 AM

I guess I would have measured the amps through the new motor. If too high, I would have investigated further into mechanical binding, wrong selection of motor for load, wiring conditions, and the like.

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#2

Re: Motors Burning

03/10/2011 2:38 AM

Beside what tornado said,Check if you are using motor in right wiring configuration, I mean star/delta.

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Commentator

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#3

Re: Motors Burning

03/10/2011 4:00 AM

Hi,

If u have numerical relay protection for the feeder, kindly go through the relay records for any start indications of faults at the time of motor failure. It may give you some ideas.

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Guru

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#4

Re: Motors Burning

03/10/2011 8:23 AM

Possibly due to Carona. Try an inverter duty motor.

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#5
In reply to #4

Re: Motors Burning

03/10/2011 10:23 AM

Do you run the motor at a low frequency through the inverter? If you do you may need to install a force cooling fan on the motor, because the standard shaft mounted fan becomes useless if the speed is decreased too much.

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#6

Re: Motors Burning

03/10/2011 1:23 PM

<Insert standard rant about using vague terminology and incomplete information>

I have no idea what a "Falcon" refers to, other than the bird, the US Football Team for Atlanta, a classic Ford automobile or a very fast fictional space ship piloted by Han Solo. You also didn't supply any meaningful data on the motor itself other than size and voltage rating.

So there are a number of potential issues, most already mentioned:

  1. You are running the motor too slow and it does not have adequate cooling when you do. So either change the motor to one that is rated for inverter duty (if it isn't already) and/or supply a separately powered cooling fan.
  2. You have a non-inverter rated motor and the distance from the drive to the motor is long, which allows for the creation of a phenomenon called "standing waves" that will damage the winding insulation. A good motor rewind shop can usually diagnose that as the cause of the failure by observing insulation breakdown in the first turns of the windings as they receive the brunt of the damaging high voltage spikes caused by the standing waves. Again, inverter duty motors use better insulation to withstand this, but there are also other mitigation methods that can be employed after the fact.
  3. You have a motor that is too small for the load and you have set the protection circuit inappropriately for the task, although you did already post that you double checked it.
  4. Your motor connection is not correct, i.e. you have it connected in Delta instead of Star. If it has been working fine and only recently had that problem this is not likely, but again, if you had used a more descriptive term for the machine / process that would have helped eliminate this. Some processes work fine for a long time with misconnected motors because the load is highly variable.
  5. You have an ambient temperature problem and the added heating caused by the VFD is too much for the motor.
  6. You failed to mention the failure mode of the motor, other than "burnt", which could mena a lot of things. Another potential issue is bearing failure because of static voltage discharges across the bearing races. The bearings get damaged, the rotor crashes into the stator, you see something "burnt".
  7. You have a bad VFD.

There are probably more.

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#7

Re: Motors Burning

03/10/2011 1:57 PM

The gearbox itself is fine (bearings, cog wheels)?

Also, nothing was put between the drive and the motor - contactors, switches?

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Power-User

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#8

Re: Motors Burning

03/11/2011 2:49 AM

Hi,

To burn out 2 motors, driven by a VSD!

My first question is which model of Falcon are refering to? You know, we dont, what is a falcon?

What RPM are you running the VSD at?

If you are running it at a low speed is there any forced air cooling?

Never run a motor at less than 20% of the rated speed unless you have forced air cooling.

I do not think that you have wired the motor incorrectly but you may have, check that motor information.

But most of all, to help you we need to know what is a Falcon, and how does it operate?

Cheers

Joe

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#9
In reply to #8

Re: Motors Burning

03/11/2011 5:33 AM

Hi,

Thanks all for your responses.Just to answer what a falcon is.It is a small tank with an Agitator where Gold Concetrate is mixed with some chemicals of some kind.I guess you call it by some other name,I know you know it

Regards.

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