Dead ABB Drive?

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Dzboyce

Senior Member
Location
Royal City, WA
Occupation
Washington 03 Electrician & plumber
One of my Dairy customers called me yesterday. The have three wells supplying water for the dairy. Well one has a 60 hp sub pump with a Yaskawa drive. Well two has a 40 hp sub pump with an Aquavar by Gould’s branded drive. It’s actually an ABB ACS550 with some custom programming for centrifugal pumps. Well three is a 10 hp sub pump with a Yaskawa. Yaskawa drives are probably the most used drive in the agricultural market, at least here in the Pacific Northwest. Have a couple of good distributors for them.

Anyway, they called yesterday and said the 40 hp ABB wasn’t working. Ran out and looked. No display on the control pad. Verified power to the drive. Replaced the control pad with a new one today. Still no display. Anybody have any ideas or suggestions? Not much I can do if I can’t get the display to power up.

Otherwise, they will get a new Yaskawa to replace the ABB. Don’t have anything against ABB, just a lot more familiar with the Yaskawa drives. My cost is less than $100 difference between them.
 

Besoeker

Senior Member
Location
UK
One of my Dairy customers called me yesterday. The have three wells supplying water for the dairy. Well one has a 60 hp sub pump with a Yaskawa drive. Well two has a 40 hp sub pump with an Aquavar by Gould’s branded drive. It’s actually an ABB ACS550 with some custom programming for centrifugal pumps. Well three is a 10 hp sub pump with a Yaskawa. Yaskawa drives are probably the most used drive in the agricultural market, at least here in the Pacific Northwest. Have a couple of good distributors for them.

Anyway, they called yesterday and said the 40 hp ABB wasn’t working. Ran out and looked. No display on the control pad. Verified power to the drive. Replaced the control pad with a new one today. Still no display. Anybody have any ideas or suggestions? Not much I can do if I can’t get the display to power up.

Otherwise, they will get a new Yaskawa to replace the ABB. Don’t have anything against ABB, just a lot more familiar with the Yaskawa drives. My cost is less than $100 difference between them.
It could be something as simple as a loose connection but I don't know how much time you would put into fault finding before the cost of a replacement drive would be the way to go.
 

Jraef

Moderator, OTD
Staff member
Location
San Francisco Bay Area, CA, USA
Occupation
Electrical Engineer
I’m fairly sure that ABB powers the electronics via a DC-DC chopper power supply tapped off of the DC bus. Last I checked (ASC500, the predecessor to the 550) this was a separate card inside of the drive and was replaceable, but it wasn’t easy to do it in the field. So I agree with Besoeker, replace it now and then see if it’s repairable by playing with it on a workbench at your leisure. If you fix it, there is always a market for used drives.
 

Besoeker

Senior Member
Location
UK
I’m fairly sure that ABB powers the electronics via a DC-DC chopper power supply tapped off of the DC bus. Last I checked (ASC500, the predecessor to the 550) this was a separate card inside of the drive and was replaceable, but it wasn’t easy to do it in the field. So I agree with Besoeker, replace it now and then see if it’s repairable by playing with it on a workbench at your leisure. If you fix it, there is always a market for used drives.

Thank you kind sir. And I agree. Most I have dealt with are fed from the DC link. Including those we designed.
 

Cow

Senior Member
Location
Eastern Oregon
Occupation
Electrician
When I've had this happen in the past with various drives, I've always just replaced them. Sounds like a good opportunity to throw another Yaskawa in there so all their drives are the same.

You're in the same market I am up here in NE Oregon. Yaskawa is our preference, we have two sitting in the shop right now, but we've also done ABB and AB and come across a fair amount of those three as well. Although we have one local pump shop that's been selling Weg for a few years now.

Yaskawa also has a higher ambient temp rating in their 3R enclosures than ABB does last time I checked.
 
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