Scanning for ideas: Powerful and versatile ac drive

November 8, 2007

The Commander GP20 generalpurpose ac drive from Control Techniques, a div. of Emerson Industrial Automation based in Minneapolis (http://www.controltechniques.com/index.asp) lets operators choose between V/Hz, flux vector or enhanced rotor flux to operate the drive.

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Edited by Stephen J. Mraz

The latter generates simulated encoder feedback for improved shaft performance. The drives can control from 1 to 200 hp, and use anything from 230 to 690 V.

Thermal management works with switching frequencies up to 16 kHz, and output frequencies can be as high as 3,000 Hz. A 7- digit backlit LED data display can be mounted on the drive or remotely. The device’s CGPKe ypad Plus handles five languages and supports a custom text database. The database lets users specify their own terminology for parameters.

To make it easy to get up and running, the device comes with SmartCard, a way to store and download data for several drives. It can also save changes for maintenance purposes and set up applications as parameter differences from defaults. The card comes with several preset appl icat ion macros for the most common general-purpose applications. The device also handles S-ramp acceleration and deceleration profiles and has a built-in motorized potentiometer.