WEG CFW300 & CFW320 VFD Maintenance Made Easy from AutomationDirect

Taking care of your WEG CFW300 Drive is easy. Just replace the fan periodically, reform the capacitors, and do the regular periodic inspections. To replace the fan - Pop the old one out. Drop a new one in. It’s recommended that the fan be replaced every 40,000 hours of run time under normal conditions – your mileage may vary depending on your environment. That’s Fan run time – not drive run time. When the fan run time exceeds 50,000 hrs., the drive will generate a 177-alarm reminding you to replace the fan. You can see the current fan run time in parameter 45. That’s a hex number so it can go to a hexadecimal four f’s - which is a little over 65,000 hrs. Once you have replaced the fan, reset the fan time that’s shown in parameter 45 by going to parameter 204 and entering a thirteen. If we go back to parameter 45 – we see our fan time is now zero. Perfect. One thing to be aware of is the fan time shown in parameter 45 is only updated when the drive is power cycled. That’s because normally you would only want to check it during your regular maintenance schedule. So, don’t expect to see parameter 45 update each hour on the LCD while the drive runs. Parameter 352 allows you to control how the fan operates. You can turn it off, have it always on, or let the drive decide when it needs to be on – which is the default and what you probably want to be using. Maintaining the drives capacitors is crucial to preventing pre-mature failure. And it’s easy. If your drive hasn’t had power applied in over a year, then just apply whatever power your drive would normally expect for at least one hour. Then disconnect the drive from the power source and let it sit for at least 24 hours before using it. Why is this important? A capacitor is basically two metal plates with opposing charge. The charges are kept separate from each other by an insulating layer. The electrolytic capacitors in a drive typically use paper soaked in an electrolytic solution. When the electrolyte is kept charged, it forms an oxide layer on the anode plate and it is that oxide layer that serves as the insulator between the two metal plates. If the electrolyte isn’t kept charged, the oxide layer degrades, which means the two metal plates aren’t very well insulated from each other and you ultimately get something very close to a short circuit. So, now when you apply power to the drive, current passes straight through causing everything to get really hot which boils the electrolyte, burns up the metal plates and causes the electrolytic capacitor to explode. Which not only destroys the capacitor but all the stuff around it too because the gases that are released are caustic. So, if your drive has been sitting for a while – roughly a year or so – PLEASE take the time to reform the capacitors. By the way, it’s called reforming the capacitors because you are literally reforming that oxide layer by applying voltage in a controlled manner. What about that drive you just got form the factory? Does it need to be reformed? It certainly can’t hurt, but the easiest way to tell is to look at the label. This code right here is the week and year the drive was manufactured. So, if it has been a year since the drive was manufactured, then will definitely want to reform the capacitors. And finally, every 6 months, inspect the items listed in table 6.3 of the drive’s user manual. The manual even has step by step procedures for cleaning the ventilation System and Circuit Cards. Well, that’s about it for drive maintenance. Click here to learn more about the WEG CFW300 Variable Frequency Drive. Click here to learn about AutomationDirect’s free award-winning support options and click here to subscribe to our YouTube Channel so you will be notified when we publish new videos.