O/T Controlling 8,000 Watts of electric motors

[AMMO]

Regin

 

I had already worked that one out. What I am hoping is that I have only one or maximum two motors defective. In which case I can run the flowbench on six motors rather than eight until I can get some replacemements. Julian Thompson called about something and I took the opportunity to pick his brains. Neither of us liked the idea of the flowbench running on odd number motors.

 

Richard

 

The idea at the moment is to do a slight re-wire and run the motors two at a time in series controlled by a 2000 w dimmer switch for each two motors.

 

Dave

 

My old Superflow 300 flowbench with the motor controller ran cooler. Maybe you don't need that much air passing through it to cool the motors or because they are running with less current they are not generating that much heat. Dunno. All I know is that my old 300 was the only flowbench I never had problems with in the motor department.

 

Thanks again for your thoughts and ideas

 

AMMO

 

Edited by - AMMO on 5 Oct 2007 09:23:05

[Colin Mill]

I used some inverters of about 1kW capability to control 3 phase motors driving a hoist on an automated electroplating rig - superb control and no problems with dissipation in the motors. Its a while back but I seem to recall they were peanuts - less than a £100 each and I suspect they have got cheaper since then.

[AMMO]

Update

 

The flowbench is now fixed as of yesterday. Two of the eight motors were faulty. We've decided to not try to make our own motor controller but fork out for the proper Superflow Flowcom / controller.

 

Richard turned out to be 100% corrrect about the switched off motrs turning backwards. I could have gone to the trouble of blanking off the two motors but it was just easier to fix the damn thing. If we burn out another motor we could in an emergency disconnect two motors and blank them off whilst awaiting spares.

 

Thanks to all that contributed for your helpful suggestions and thoughts.

 

 

 

AMMO