Hi all,
After sharing a VFD between two milling machines for too long it was time to pull the trigger on a dedicated VFD for my Pacific mill. It's been a while since I bought a VFD. All my previous VFD purchases have been Huanyang brands and I have only ever had good experiences with them. They tend to get a bad wrap on some forums (in fact some US forums have banned the discussion of these) but they do what I want them to do. Anyway, to my surprise there are now VFD's on ebay that are even cheaper than the Huanyang. One such brand is Isacon, in fact they may all be this brand but it's difficult to know. There have been discussions on this forum and elsewhere regarding Isacon VFD's with mixed reviews.
One thing to notice is that these cheaper VFd's seem to have less flexibility compared to HY equivalent. In fact they only have about half the number of parameters available for programming. This may not be a massive contraint if your requirements are rather straight forward such as would be the case on a lathe, mill or SG etc. Quality of internal components such as capacitors may also be compromised but who would know?
One concern I did have regarding these cheaper VFD's is that there seems to be no way of adjusting the carrier frequency. They seem to do everything else I need. The reason this concerns me is that when I was setting up my very first HY VFD, it took me some mucking around with this parameter before I managed to get the motor to run quietly without a noticable whine. SO I figured it's probably a nice parameter to be able to control.
I then came across this ebay offering.
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/2-2KW-3H...72.m2749.l2649
It's definately not a huanyang as the electrical schematic is drawn slightly different eventhough the pinouts seem to be the same. However, it does claim to have a selectable carrier frequency. So, for around the $100 delivered I bought one.
Hopefully I should have it at least roughed in, programmed and tested in a couple of weeks so I can report on my findings. Long term reliability will remain to be seen.
Simon