Cutler-Hammer Advantage motor starters 3

[Stevereno]

We have had numerous random equipment outages with the Cutler-Hammer Advantage 480 volt motor starters. This typ occurs with smaller drives (less than 5 HP). We have performed extensive harmonic analysis on the plant's power. Sure our plant has a little noise, but we are clearly less than the C-H spec'd 5% THD.

Has anyone experienced this with Cutler-Hammer Advantage starters? Is it the current sensor?

Thanks for any help!

Stevereno

 

[dpc]

What type of equipment outages? Unexplained shutdowns? Starter failures? Overload trips? If you can give us more specific info on the types of outages, we can probably give you a better answer.

I don't recall many questions/problems on this forum related to Advantage starters over the years.

Dave

 

[Stevereno]

Outages:

1. Not caused by PLC. Outages happen in Local Mode or Auto Mode.
2. May be related to current sensor in the starter. Many of these "smart" starters have a metering module mounted on the bucket. And these current sensors are reading too high....in other words, a clamp-on Fluke typically reads lower amps.

Just wondered if the Forum had any experience with the Freedom Series ("dumb starters") vs the Advantage Starters vs the Advantage Plus Starters.

Thank you. We are very disappointed with these Advantage Starters.

 

[jeezlouise]

I have had dozens of older MCC buckets retrofitted with new Advantage starter buckets on older F10 and 9800 C-H MCCs. I can only recall one problem that was similar to yours. We had a size 2 starter that would inexplicable just turn off. As if the starter coil circuit was opened. C-H replaced the starter and we've had no problems since. Sorry, I don't have an answer for you. We have considerable noise on our system so I don't believe that is your issue.

 

[dpc]

"Outage" is a non-specific term and doesn't really tell us much.

I take it these were not failures in the starter but rather unexplained opening of the contactor?

Did the overload relay indicate a trip?

 

[jraef]

The thing that was radically different about the Advantage Series starters when Westinghouse originally released them in the late '80s (before the Eaton buyout that pulled them into Cutler Hammer) was that for the first time, they used an "electronic coil" for operation. This is essentially a small rectifier and DC ramp circuit embedded in a DC coil that ramps DC voltage so that it closes "softly" and avoids contact bounce (I put quotes on softly because it is NOT to be confused with a soft starter). This was very popular at first, but my opinion was and is that they were solving a problem that most people didn't have and took something very basic like an electromagnet and made it unnecessarily complex, adding more failure points to boot. There were initial problems for Westinghouse, but in all fairness it is likely that over the years C-H has addressed them by now. Is this equipment older?


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[Stevereno]

It sounds like no one is having difficulty w/ the Advantage starters. Thanks for all your assistance.

 

[cherry2000]

One problem that I remember we had in one of our earlier projects, where we were using the Advantage Starters, was spurious trips due to long control cables wired to the unit, which were picking up voltages due to EMI. I believe Eaton specifies certain limiting control cable lengths, which can be pretty small if the control cables are unshielded. Since the control signal is at 24VDC, shielded Twisted Shielded Pair cables are common. Now the shield should be unterminated at one end, to prevent any circulating currents. Just my thoughts from a past project. Electronic black boxes are always prone to such unforeseen problems.

Another vendor, whom I shall not name, has carried out tests only upto 300m on 24VDC control cable, for a simialar arrangement. They accept no responsibility for control cable lengths beyond this value!!