VFD off the bay

I have a Huanyang vfd as well. Still going after about 5 years. Also have a couple of Mitsubishi ones as well, far better but 3 times the cost.

The plate on the side of a new Mitsubishi I looked at said made in China. My Schneider is made in Indonesia, I chose it simply on the basis of its waste heat output at maximum power was lower than my other shortlisted ones.

Inverters have come a long way from the early efforts that had a shocking waveform which produced a lot of heat and noise from the motor. The technology is now well understood and the price has fallen dramatically for a basic no frills device, as usual corners will cut to drive the price right down and some will fall well short of the best safety and performance standards. Devices with no name would be not on my shopping list but the Huangyang brand seems to have collected some positive support from users so might be worth a try.

Mike

A genuine Huang Yang VFD is OK, but many of the ones on ebay etc are clones or fakes.

With these types of cheap clones and fakes (not just VFDs) they save costs by not including components that do not affect basic operation but often have a safety or protection function. These include overheat and overload detection, filtering transient protection etc. They also often use under-rated componens like DC bus capacitors an output transistors. This means they work with nominal supply voltage and less than full load but may not perform or fail if fully loaded. Poor quality components and shoddy construction can also lead to electric shock and fire hazards. When operaing machine tools even a minor shock can have severe consequences as muscle contraction or reflex may result in body parts touching moving prats or sharp tools. I saw someone get a really badly cut hand from a stationary but sharp cutter on a bridgeport because they were changing the lamp in the work light. They pulled away because it was hot (power was off) but the effect was the same.

Robert G8RPI.

eBay has many fake devices for sale and the sheer scale of the platform makes it near impossible to police. Many things I just will not buy on eBay because it is near certain to be a fake, Sandisk USB sticks seem very widely faked and I wonder if there is a genuine one on eBay. I have bought a lot of good stuff on eBay and even had the odd bargain. I have a couple of excellent Lenze inverters that have come up at a good price but being a modular system some of the interfaces are often a bit dear, however a bit of patience will often be rewarded with a good priced item.

Mike

I have 2 fake cheap no name clone VFDs from Banggood, about £55 each delivered from China. I would normally buy products from close to the top of the range but took a punt on one of these instead of an Optidrive. I must say, for the money I cant fault them. Neither gets hot, run the motors quiet happily etc. They don't do vector control but neither the lathe of mill motors get a hard life (3hp and 2hp respectively). I've just bought a new mill so will try a branded VFD with proper braking and sensorless vector control on the lathe and move the cheap one to the new mill, but it isn't going to be easy to justify the extra expense.

I think we should remind ourselves what the original question was;

" Looking on the bay there are literally loads of far eastern drives. Has anybody got one of these versions in service ? Are they reliable ?"

I think that has been well and truly answered.

Brian

Edited By Brian H on 28/11/2019 22:25:46