If it ain’t broke (even after 26 years), don’t fix it.
Have you ever wondered what the life expectancy of an ABB drive is? On average, in the right environment, it’s 20-plus years, but sometimes even we’re surprised by their longevity.
Last week we were asked to contact a local Petrochemical plant which wanted to arrange a service visit for 3 ABB Inverters.
The surprise was when we were given the ABB part no: Sami GS, ACS502-060-5-OOPs. This ended its production run in 1995. The youngest these drives could be was 23... When we attended site we found that the drives were manufactured in 1992—and were in their 26th year of service! With numerous and advantageous innovations in drive manufacture since the 1990s, we offered the customer new ACS580 drives, which offer competitive advantages. They’re designed with many features you would otherwise have to build in; energy management tools, safe torque off, remote condition monitoring, timer relays, an AC choke, EMC filter, contactors, door-mounted HMIs, mini PLCs and a programmable keypad to cut the need for external start/ stop buttons. The ACS580 is also 45% smaller and packed with sensors, all ready to be connected to the Internet of Things.
But the customer, made a good point (in line with EDC’s policy of preserving, protecting & prolonging): these drives had been running efficiently for almost 3 decades. They didn’t want to change them. Located in a good operating environment, only the cooling fans had ever been replaced.
For reliability, efficiency and quality, how cool is that? Here’s to the next 26 years!