230V power conditioner?

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chris kennedy

Senior Member
Location
Miami Fla.
Occupation
60 yr old tool twisting electrician
I have a sensitive piece of equipment, 230V single phase using 1 ungrounded and 1 grounded conductor from a 400y/230V system.
i monitored V for 24hrs and had swings between 226 and 220V. Machine is going out of caliberation.

Does anyone know of a power conditioner for this? 7kw

Thanks
 

mbrooke

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United States
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Technician
What type of load is this? 226-220 swings are perfectly normal for a building power system. Is it just low voltage in itself or the swings? How do you know it loses calibration?
 

chris kennedy

Senior Member
Location
Miami Fla.
Occupation
60 yr old tool twisting electrician
It's an ultra-sonic cleaner. It's European rated 230V 60hz,
The 220 is right at its 5% tolerance.
Engineer having all kinds of problems keeping elements at correct temps. Says he has had 3 of the caliberation boards fail in last month.

FWIW, I was there when rep commissioned the equipment.
 

mbrooke

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Location
United States
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Technician
It's an ultra-sonic cleaner. It's European rated 230V 60hz,
The 220 is right at its 5% tolerance.
Engineer having all kinds of problems keeping elements at correct temps. Says he has had 3 of the caliberation boards fail in last month.

FWIW, I was there when rep commissioned the equipment.



I could be wrong, but I would think voltage swing of that small amount are not responsible. Failing boards sound like something else is doing it.
 

chris kennedy

Senior Member
Location
Miami Fla.
Occupation
60 yr old tool twisting electrician
I monitored with a 289 at a sample rate of 1 per min for 24hrs. Probably should monitor with min/max for a day. In an area of So Flo that's notorious for POCO issues.
 

Jraef

Moderator, OTD
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Location
San Francisco Bay Area, CA, USA
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Electrical Engineer
You can get a power conditioner, but you will need to know the exact details of the load, because some types of loads don't do well with some types of power conditioners. Case in point, ferroresonnant power conditioners, such as a Sola CVS, will "flat top" in the presence of a highly non-linear load, such as almost all Switch Mode Power Supplies. To compensate, you can seriously over size the CVS, as in >40%, which can then make it very inefficient, as in <75%. People sometimes don't care, but it's important to understand that and not try to go cheap on sizing the CVS.
 
You could get something like a 8-10kva Liebert/Emerson GTX4 UPS. A bit pricey but it'll be rock solid. Even an APC should do it. One question is whether the device needs a end-grounded 230v feed or if it can be center-grounded (from a 120/240 output dialed down to 230).
 

chris kennedy

Senior Member
Location
Miami Fla.
Occupation
60 yr old tool twisting electrician
You could get something like a 8-10kva Liebert/Emerson GTX4 UPS. A bit pricey but it'll be rock solid. Even an APC should do it. One question is whether the device needs a end-grounded 230v feed or if it can be center-grounded (from a 120/240 output dialed down to 230).

I suggested UPS but thats probably around 10K. I need to supply this equipment with 1 230V ungrounded conductor and a grounded conductor(neutral) with EGC.
 

mpoulton

Senior Member
Location
Phoenix, AZ, USA
I'm with zbang. If the supplied voltage is right at the lower end of the acceptable range but doesn't vary excessively, then only a boost transformer is required rather than a conditioner. Boost it enough to put it in the middle of the acceptable range, then see if the problems still persist.
 

__dan

Senior Member
One possibility, internally the equipment will have control power and load power. It's a good bet that the load power may be insensitive or not fussy about incoming power glitches and will run on dirty power. It may have a rectifier front end that will eat anything.

It sometimes happens that the control boards have no ride through capacity for power glitches incoming and just dump the load, basically just turn off and go into alarm.

If that's the problem, the control board will be drawing ~ 50 watts or so and that's range of the power conditioner you would be looking to apply. A ferroresonant type is less efficient, but it's super efficient if you only need to condition 50 watts.

Intercepting the control power inside the equipment and applying a conditioner would be an engineering change. Only allowable with the permission of and at the direction of the equipment manufacturer. But if that's what you need, the actual work is tiny. I would look at that possibility with a ferroresonant type on the control power only, for ride through of poco glitches. Assuming the 230 volt line to ground supply meets the spec.
 

chris kennedy

Senior Member
Location
Miami Fla.
Occupation
60 yr old tool twisting electrician
Intercepting the control power inside the equipment and applying a conditioner would be an engineering change.

Been thinking about this, the largest 230V conditioner I can find is 2kw. Below is a pic of the power supply, not listed on the manufactures replacement parts list. Equipment was purchased used but did come with factory commissioning.

The next thing to try would be to go up 5% on the 400y/230V tranny taps as I'm low at no load. Issue is I have another piece of equipment thats been operating with no problems off the same tranny for a couple years now.

Power supply



 

gar

Senior Member
Location
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Occupation
EE
160426-0836 EDT

Chris:

The Omron power supply you pictured should have no problem with the line voltage variation you have indicated. The Omron is a switching power supply. This means it has a rectifier and filter capacitor (energy storage capacitor) at the very input. Any steady-state AC input from 100 to 240 V will produce an outpit of about 24 V. That input should be able to jump all around within the 100 to 240 V range and have little affect on the output voltage. The input can go to zero for one or more input cycles and the output should still hold near steady. Precise parameter I vcan not tell you.

Is the Omron working correctly? This needs to be determined.

Some of the input power for the ultrasonic system is the ultrasonic generator, but most likely the major power input is required by the resistive heaters. The resistive heaters don't care much about input voltage. Any variations here should be compensted for by the heater control circuit.

You don't need a high power voltage regulator at the input to this system. Nor is it likely you need higher input voltage.

Find out if the Omron is working correctly. Then study the internal circuitry and try to figure out how or why control boards should be failing. Are the control boards totally supplied by the 24 V supply? What is failing on the control boards? Do the control boards control heater current and thus the temperature, or is something else conytrolling temperature? Like a bimetal thermql switch.

I have to leave and I have not proofread.

.
 

__dan

Senior Member
Yep, as Gar said, the Omron should be all that is needed for filtering and ride through of line side glitches. It's an inexpensive part if you suspect it may be bad. They don't last forever. Omron, Meanwell are good brands.

I would suggest further information gathering is necessary. What is failing and the failure mode. If the control boards are getting blown, it could be something at the input or someting at its outputs.

If it will just not regulate temp, often that's a standalone PID temp controller, and they also do not last forever. Maybe bad connection between it and the sensor, bad sensor ... A standalone PID temp controller probably takes line voltage, not loaded on the Omron.

Is it used with some kind of warranty, factory refurbished, or auction equipment used?

Are they blaming, suspecting, bad line voltage or is it possible the equipment was just liquidated and moved from somewere else without concern it actually runs. There is a question of who is responsible for repairs and diagnosis if the problem is in the equipment.

The 400/230 Y tranny, do you have 400 at the line side to feed it? If you don't, and the load is single phase, it would be pretty easy to get a seperately derived 230 v secondary and ground one side for a neutral, matching system voltage at the primary. If the 400/230 Y matches the application perfectly, take a look at its system bonding jumper (primarily) and GEC. Measure the N to G voltage, resistance, as a quick check to see if its more than expected. The sensitive control boards will not like the N to G voltage more than 1.5 v or so.
 
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