DART dives in to divert disaster!

DART proved to be as good as gold for a metal recycling plant. 

‘Device metric has breached threshold’ – you can almost hear the cacophony of Klaxons blaring!

In a hot and harsh environment variable speed drives struggle to perform at their best. 

They need proper ventilation to keep temperature under control – and these drives weren’t receiving it. They were constantly tripping, causing unnecessary downtime.

The operators knew ventilation was needed, they believed the drives were receiving it. But they weren’t. Why was this the case?

As Sherlock Holmes would say ‘When you’ve eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth’ – and DART convinced the customer of this.

Keen to rectify the situation the plant room installed DART … and so the story unfolds.

Imagine a DART unit connected to two drives via a modbus RS-485 link. It continuously monitors equipment health from inside the facilities MCC, where each drive is mounted in its own cabinet.

The inverter temperature threshold for both drives was set at 60% on the specialised DART website.

Over several hours the DART system issued repeated warnings showing the temperature of one drive rising steadily from (wait for it ) 60% to 92%. At this point, having given its all, our valiant drive trips.

We now know, beyond all question of doubt, that temperature is the issue. DART has proven it.

But worry not. The drives were saved because of this finding. An investigation revealed that the drive had been left in ‘HAND MODE’, preventing the cabinet fans (normally activated only in AUTO MODE) from switching on. This allowed heat to build up until the drive ultimately tripped.

It was a failure that could have been easily avoided if DART had been set up and the alerts monitored and addressed. DART would have provided the onsite engineers with data proving a build-up of heat was the issue. They would have had a heads up. No guessing, no ‘what if’ scenario. The data insights they received would have been clear and pinpoint accurate.

DART: Warnings in advance of breakdowns. Knowledge of what’s happening in your plant room. All this from one device, monitoring 16 drives at the one time (yes, 16 into 1 does go)!

What can we take from this? One DART and you’re done. Your ABB drives will thank you.