GS3 VFD 10hp/4Kw Chinese Spindle
I have had issues in the past with this spindle on a Chinese VFD, which is the one shown in the video.
Spindle Bogs down in cut. - YouTube
I switched out the VFD for a GS3 10hp and hadn't really had any issues since (but I don't push the spindle much at all, mostly V-Carving and 2.5D work), until I bought a new 2.25" spoil board cutter. I was running it at 12000 rpm, 300ipm, and the spindle stopped dead within about 4 seconds of cutting, with the cutter being ramped in on a 0.03 fly cut. By my assumptions, this setup should have had no issue with that cut at all.
Same as previous. If you look at the VFD (I never really paid attention to this before), the spindle was only pulling about 3.6 amps when it failed, and the VFD tried to push it to 6.6 but at that point it was too late.
So my question is this. Is it really the spindles issue, not the VFD. I would assume the spindle would be pulling 18 amps (max load) fairly quickly, or are the windings on 1 or 2 phases not working correctly?
I am not an electrical person, any help would be greatly appreciated.
Re: GS3 VFD 10hp/4Kw Chinese Spindle
Have you set the VFD parameters to match the motor parameters? Sounds like it is current limiting.
Re: GS3 VFD 10hp/4Kw Chinese Spindle
I am going to quadruple check them when I get home, but yes. First thing I am going to do is check resistance on the spindle windings, and then go from there.
Re: GS3 VFD 10hp/4Kw Chinese Spindle
I assume you are feeding the VFD with 3 phase. I heard that the 5HP and larger GS3s will only run on 3 phase, but personally have never tried to run the larger ones on single phase.
Also are you using SV mode? P2.10 = 2 This will dramatically improve lower speed performance.
Re: GS3 VFD 10hp/4Kw Chinese Spindle
It is on single phase. The GS3's will run at max 3hp on 1 phase, but that should still be within the limits of the machine.
I would almost bet that it is the P2.10 parameter. I will verify in about an hour.
Re: GS3 VFD 10hp/4Kw Chinese Spindle
Be sure to run the auto tuning routine per the instructions to run in SV mode.
Looking forward to seeing your progress on this.
4KW is 5.3 HP, so may be out of single phase range of your 10HP drive. When the spindle stops what error is on the VFD display?
Re: GS3 VFD 10hp/4Kw Chinese Spindle
I changed P2.10 parameter to 2, and I changed the parameter to 1 for Auto Tune, but it says "Error" on the display instead of "MOTOR AUTO-TUNE <STOP> TO CANCEL"
There is no error, it just seems to take forever to respond to load, where I would think that it would be instantaneous (almost)
All of the other parameters looked correct to me based on the spindle I have.
I tried another cut, and the motor load was at 23% (running at 15,000 RPM, 120 IPM) when it stopped running. It was at 1.4% with no load on the motor before it started cutting. It takes about 4 seconds for the spindle to completely bog down, and you can see the VFD sending more power, but it is about 5% a second, which I think is way, way to slow.
Re: GS3 VFD 10hp/4Kw Chinese Spindle
I have never had that error come up. But the difference is that my 10HP GS3 is running on 3 phase from my rotary phase converter. My 3HP GS3 is running on single phase, but it also auto tuned just fine.
Not sure what is going on there. I just read through the auto tune procedure and did not find a reference to Error unless the Stop button is pressed. Maybe in the error coded section?
Re: GS3 VFD 10hp/4Kw Chinese Spindle
Thanks again Jim for you help.
The auto-torque boost is set to 0. From what I can tell, that is what determines how fast the VFD will give a boost while under load. Should I try it at a higher number?
Also, I tried to set the mid-point frequency to 200 from 5 (since it is 0 to 400) and it says that same ------ERROR-------
Re: GS3 VFD 10hp/4Kw Chinese Spindle
You could try the setting the torque boost higher and see what happens. Normally the mid-point frequency is set around 5, not really sure how this affects anything.
Re: GS3 VFD 10hp/4Kw Chinese Spindle
Changing both of those settings did not help.
I am kind of at a loss right now.
I need to contact the manufacturer anyway to get a firmware update, so I am going to run it by them as well.
There is only one thing left that I think it could plausibly be, and I am going to be pretty pissed if that is it.
Re: GS3 VFD 10hp/4Kw Chinese Spindle
Well, that wasn't it. I had changed the front of the machine to make it more usable and had pulled the leads from the VFD so I could change where it was mounted. I was wondering if it was spinning in reverse, but it isn't.