The fan and pump industry may be the most common use of inverter duty motors, but other applications may also find these motors useful. Listen as host Mike Murphy and Shelley Gager, Global Segment Manager for General Industries, chat about inverter-duty motors. Learn if you’re using the correct motor for your application, how to make your motor run more efficiently, and how speed and temperature influence operations.
See ABB's offering of variable speed AC motors
Learn more about NEMA low voltage AC motors
The fan and pump industry may be the most common use of inverter duty motors, but other applications may also find these motors useful. Listen as host Mike Murphy and Shelley Gager, Global Segment Manager for General Industries, chat about inverter-duty motors. Learn if you’re using the correct motor for your application, how to make your motor run more efficiently, and how speed and temperature influence operations.
See ABB's offering of variable speed AC motors
Learn more about NEMA low voltage AC motors
Welcome to another episode of The ABB Solutions Podcast, where we speak with experts on concerns facing our industry. I'm your host, Mike Murphy, speaking to you from Greenville, South Carolina. Today, we have Shelley Gager, Global Segment Manager for General Industries. Shelly has over 20 years in the industry. Welcome, Shelley.
Shelley Gager:Thanks, Mike. Glad to be here. Thank you for having me, and looking forward to chat today.
Mike Murphy:Yeah, great having you. Okay, so our topic today is, "Do you have the right motor for your VFD controlled application?" Motors are everywhere, literally, helping make the world go round. So Shelly, can you first go over some of the main types of applications we'll see motors in and maybe an example just to kind of give us a better understanding?
Shelley Gager:Oh, for sure, without a doubt. We actually classify inverters being used in three different types of applications. So I'll start with those three big buckets first, and the most common, largest use, of variable frequency drives would be in the fan and the pump industry. And we call those applications variable torque, because when they decrease the speed, the torque also decreases. So it allows them controlling the flow of both air and water. So that by far is the biggest area where motors and drives are used jointly together as it stands today. The next one, I'll call it more of a niche segment, because it's really dependent and driven by the application itself. And that's what we call a constant horsepower type application. And those would be Winders in machine tools and things that the torque needs to change as it relates to overspeeding of the motor. So decreasing of the torque, but the power staying constant. And then lastly, probably the one that I'm closest to and in my industry in my history is the constant torque. And that constant torque area or segment, if you will, that would be your conveyors and crushers and mixers and some of the other additional equipment. And that's really when you go to decrease your speed, you must retain your torque. And so as you slow down your system, you cannot lose your torque, because you still have a lot of product to move. And one of the big examples bigger I always used as is large conveyors, my background as a mining engineer, I'm really passionate about that large conveyor segment or that bulk material. And as you turn the speed down, you still have to continue to move all that product on the belt. And you use an inverter in those situations because you want to protect the most expensive portion of that example, your conveyor belt. And the belting itself is the most financial impact to the customer. In order to protect the belt, you want to protect how much you stretch that or shock the belt. And one way of doing that is definitely including a variable frequency drive on your motor to control the speed of your motor.
Mike Murphy:Okay, great, excellent examples. Okay, thank you. Okay, so shall we, I'm in the 501 catalog, which I'm sure all of our listeners have on their desks. I'm in the general purpose motor section. Those are the gold motors that we see everywhere, right? And under the description or under the features I see motors are suitable for inverter use. So can you help me understand what does suitable for inverter use mean,
Shelley Gager:you know, a lot of inverter uses are the things you can't see in the motor. So it's all the internals of the motor and you think about the fundamentals of a motor, you have a stator, that stays stationary, that induces the magnetic field into the rotor, the rotor then rotate. And that's all done with electrical, steel and copper. And so the best way to really explain it is there's always losses, right input power in minus losses equals output power, that's kind of that fundamental work in power out, and there's losses. And so how you protect with those losses and how you make a motor better, especially when being used on an inverter, are the fundamental principles of manufacturing. And that's insulation. Insulation is a big area that the better you insulate your copper and your electrical steel, the more not only efficient, but the more you can handle temperature swings. And it's that temperature swing that really provides protection when it's in an inverter application. So the lower you go in your speed range, the more temperature you see and if your thermal, think about when you go outside and into the cold. If you don't have a heavy enough coat, you get cold. It's the same similar type thing. When you look at motors, the insulation of your motor itself is critical to operate in that different speed range. So the insulation quality in the manufacturing all of that factors into being able to be more effective on a drive. Other things come into play and that's protecting your bearings when it's running on a dry And there's different mechanical features that you may or may not be able to see. But the real fundamental basic principle is really looking at the installation and how the design of the motor is completed from design to manufacturing.
Mike Murphy:Okay, excellent. All right, so further and that same five, one catalogue, we run into variable speed motors. So now can you help me understand when would you select a motor that's suitable for inverter use, versus one that's designed for variable speed?
Shelley Gager:So that's one of my favorite questions, because over the years, it's been there. 25 years I've been in the industry, like you mentioned at the beginning, there's so many words that are used to explain nearly the exact same thing, inverter capable inverter ready inverter duty, then there's this other segment of vector control. And we'll talk about that a second. But that goes back to those fundamental three pillars of applications. We talked about that constant torque, and that variable torque, those are more traditional applications. But it's that niche application of constant horsepower Winders, Sheen tools, that segment that really falls into that variable speed section of our catalog. So the word variable speed is pretty fundamental right? You can vary the speed historically, within our organization in the industry as a whole, we've only segmented out that constant horsepower application as variable speed. That's kind of the niche. That's what historically, that was always using a drive. Well, in the last 10 years, the use of drive to motor combination. It's beyond quadrupled in relationship that more and more motors are being used. And it's because of the efficiency savings in those fans and pumps, and the protection of the investment of the customer. And those constant torque applications like the conveyor belt. So all of that now we're expanding. from a user standpoint, we're expanding when we need to use a drive and what benefit we're getting by using the inverter drive and motor combination. So going back to your original question is the variable speed section, it's really, historically been around that constant horsepower, it's when I know I need to either over speed, or I need to get so low into my speed control that I need to have precision. And they're able to use in those applications, things such as feedback devices, encoders, and other devices like that to make sure that they're controlling their speed, and they know exactly the precision they need. So that's the historical method. But I will say that if you pick up the ballad or 501 catalog, and if it's a three phase motor, and it's in that catalog, it can be run on a drive, there's different degrees of being inverter duty, I'll use that as the blanket term, that it can be run on an inverter, and it's different levels of capability that will be successful. So really, when it comes down to it, manufacturing specific, it's important to understand what you need from a user standpoint, and where to find it. But starting in the 501 catalog is a great start. Because again, if it's three phase, and it's in the 501 catalog, it's going to have some type of an inverter capability. Do it.
Mike Murphy:Alright, excellent. All right. So I think that's a great place to stop our inverter duty discussion, Shelly. Hey, thank you so much for speaking with us today. I know I learned a lot more. Remember if you would like more information, always reach out to your local ABB sales representative or visit us@www.abb.com. Then under the Products tab, select motors and generators, you'll be able to find our podcast series by searching ABB solutions podcast in your Favorite Browser. Thanks and have a great rest of your day.