The VSD that we’re using here is the ABB’s ACS180. We have remote and local options for this VSD. We’ll start with local. At the moment, the frequency is set to 49.9, so 50 hertz, and we have LOC, which is our local connection. So we’ll start off with the local wiring, test the VSD, change the direction of the motor, change the ramp up, ramp down speed. And then we’ll also look at remote control connection as well. Let’s wire our first circuit.

All right, the motor is now connected. Let’s turn it on. And you can see that the motor starts to spin. And we just reached our frequency of 49.9. Let’s increase the to 50. And here we go. Now we’re reaching full 50 hertz. Now see if we can change the speed by reducing the frequency. So I’m going to go to 25 hertz. Okay, we’re on 25 hertz now, and we can see that the motor is turning a lot slower than before. So we’re controlling the speed of the motor.

We can also check the voltage output. So if I check the line voltage, I’m only getting about 27.9 volts at 25 hertz. Let’s increase that frequency to 50 and see what we get. All right, when we get to 50 hertz, we’re getting about 46.6 volts. Let’s now change the ramp up and down speed. So we’ll go to the settings. And right now the ramp up and down is set to one second each. So let’s increase the ramp up time. And I’m going to increase it to something substantial. Let’s go to eight seconds. And ramp down, we’ll leave it the same. If I turn that on now, we can see how our motor picks up really slow as compared to before. And finally, we’re getting to about 50 hertz now. So that’s how our ramp up. Now ramp down, we left it as one second. We can always change that, but if I stop now, the frequency drops down almost instantly.

Let’s now try to change the direction of the motor. So if I turn that on now, we’ve got a very slow ramp up. We’ll wait for the motor to completely ramp up, get to 50 hertz. Now it’s at 50. I’m going to press this button and I’m going to change to this, which is changing the direction. And if I press that, you can see the motor stops first and then starts to turn in the other direction. The ramp up time is still the same.

We’ve also set up remote control macro on this motor to be three-wire control. I’ll show you what the data sheet says. So we’ve set up this VSD for three-wire control. To do that, we’ve set up our 96.04 macro select to three-wire control, and this is the circuit that we’re going to connect now so we can control the VSD or the motor with our push buttons rather than local connection.

To do that, we’ll connect our start button to digital input eight, stop button to digital input nine. We will then also create a short between the digital ground and digital input common. And we’ll also do a short between the AI2 and the 23, which is 10 volts. What that will do is it will keep the reference at 50 hertz. So let’s connect that circuit so we can see how the remote control works.

Now that we’ve connected that, let’s change this to remote. So right now it’s at local. I’ll change this to remote, go back, and then we we’ll turn this on. And you can see that the motor now turns on with the push buttons rather than turning on with the local terminals.

We just saw a demonstration of the VSD in the motor starter prac box. In the next section, we’ll look at braking. And in that one, the flywheel will be quite handy to see the speed and how quickly it stops.