| [GMCnet] Anatomy of a good news story [message #153007] |
Wed, 14 December 2011 23:22 |
glwgmc
Messages: 1014
Registered: June 2004
Karma: 10
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Senior Member |
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Hi all,
The following is one of two posts to the Felder (German maker of high end woodworking equipment) forum that I thought some of you may also enjoy. Less than a week ago my industrial cyclone dust collector fractured its impeller surround. Worst of all possible times as I still have some last minute Christmas deliveries to complete. Without a dust collector I am out of business. This post talks about how in less than a week, thanks to lots of help from that forum group and others, I was able to get back into production with a completely different, larger and more sophisticated dust collector. Along the way there also is info about modern Variable Frequency Drives (VFDs) for converting 220VAC single phase power (like most of you have in your homes) into three phase variable voltage, variable frequency power to run all sorts of industrial machines with soft start, variable speed, motor overload protection and much more. Really amazing devices which may be of value if you ne
ed to run three phase power tools from your single phase household current. The days of static or rotary phase converters are over. In a few years all electric motor machines will be controlled by these things as they bring a vast array of programmability to the level that any of you can use and from which you can benefit. Enjoy the read or skip it all together.....
...................
Thanks to the great help from this forum [sic...the German company Felder forum], Felder tech support and a number of others I am back up and in production again less than a week after the impeller housing fractured on my Clearvue cyclone dust collector spewing fine dust all over my studio and gallery. When I got it down for inspection it turns out that the main mounting plate and the motor mounting plate had also both warped and bowed more than an inch from the weight of the unit hanging from the wall so the whole thing would likely have fallen off the wall within a few months. That all happened at the end of last week. The Clearvue folks were great and immediately shipped replacement parts even though I had purchased this unit (their largest) from the previous owner of that business.
When I first installed this unit a few years ago, I made the mistake of building it into a sound deadened area against one wall in my open studio and gallery. I wanted to hide it from view and try to quiet things down since visitors to the gallery would see and hear it. That turned out to have some unintended consequences that always made that Clearvue unit problematic for me. Having it inside a closed area made it hard to get to the filters to clean them. I had to physically remove the filters, take them outside and bang them around on the driveway to remove the caked on fine dust. It also made it hard for me to know when the collection bin was filling up. I had to open a door, remove the lid from the metal drum bin and look to see the level of the chips - something I sometimes did not do often enough. If you ever fill up the bin on a cyclone, the remaining incoming chips and dust will be shunted directly into the cylindrical filters packing them and cutting off the ai
r flow. It all can happen so fast you don't even realize it is occurring until it is too late. Once the filters fill up it is a real mess to remove them, carry them outside dropping stuff everywhere to clean them out. It is a real productivity killer. This is not the fault of the design of cyclones, it is pilot error. But, once you isolate the cyclone bin and filters from easy access, ti becomes a real problem for a heavy user like me.
So, while waiting for the needed replacement components I thought I should also see what Felder units might be available as I though the RL series might well solve several of my issues with cyclones. The Clearvue was the third cyclone I had implemented and was clearly the best of those three, but these productivity issues remained. On Friday I called Felder to see if they had any RL 160 units available in either single or three phase. The answer was there are none in the US available and the next batch would not be here until Feb - too late for my needs. I then made an initial posting on this chat group asking about availability of a used 160. Over the week end I received suggestions from several of you both about 160s and in one case an ad for two 200s that were in Bend, OR, about 225 miles away. First thing Monday morning I called on the 200s in Bend. They were owned by a guitar manufacturer who had just been acquired and the new owners wanted them to implement a cen
tral bag house system so they needed to get rid of two of their four 200s.
I made arrangements that morning to buy one of those units and they were willing to deliver it to me here. Around 4:00pm on Monday, the RL200 hit my front door. After making arrangements to buy this 200 (a three phase unit and I only have single phase power in my building) I began searching for a VFD. A friend in the region, Glen Woodbury, President of Power and Control Systems in Medford, OR, suggested a Yaskawa CIMR-BA0018FAA which is a 5hp single phase in, three phase out 17.5 amp unit that seemed perfect for this application. He ordered the unit for me and it arrived today. In the mean time the parts for the Clearvue also arrived so I at least had two chances of getting up and running to make the Christmas deliveries promised to customers. Conversations with Felder tech support resulted in emailed versions of the manual for this 2008 machine and, most importantly, a wiring diagram.
The 200 has very nice mechanical soft start controls and motor overload protection, but the VFD provides those plus variable speed and a host of programmable features way beyond the Felder supplied electronics like built in provisions for wireless remote control and easy implementation of the existing manometer auto shut down feature as well. Plus, it is made by Yaskawa USA in the Chicago region (a highly regarded Japanese manufacturer of industrial motors and controls) and has a 20 year mean time to failure! I removed all the Felder supplied electronics and now drive the 200 with just this VFD.
So, in less than a week, with the help from this group, from Felder tech support, from Glenn Woodbury and from Clearvue I went from dead in the water to back in production. A hearty thanks to each of you! Since I don't know the max length of a post on this forum, I will put some observations and performance info in a second, part two post.
Jerry Work
The Dovetail Joint
Fine furniture designed and hand crafted in the 1907 former Masonic Temple building in historic Kerby, OR
Visitors always welcome!
glwork@mac.com
http://jerrywork.com
541-592-5360
www.southernoregonguild.org
www.siskiyouguild.org
Jerry Work
The Dovetail Joint
Fine furniture designed and hand crafted in the 1907 former Masonic Temple building in historic Kerby, OR
Visitors always welcome!
glwork@mac.com
http://jerrywork.com
541-592-5360
www.southernoregonguild.org
www.siskiyouguild.org
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Jerry & Sharon Work
78 Royale
Kerby, OR
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