WEG CFW500 VFD Quick Start from AutomationDirect

Let’s use this single-phase 1 horsepower WEG CFW500 drive to control this 1 horsepower motor you don’t have to worry about derating for single-phase! These are the parameters we are going to set and the values we are going to use to get the motor spinning in our little demo. Let’s quickly walk through setting these up just so you can get a feel for the flow. Before doing anything, let’s reset the drive to factory default so if you’re following along we are both starting at the exact same place. Press the Enter/Menu button to get to the parameters menu. You can use the up-down arrows to quickly jump to specific parameter groups, but, I usually just use the main all parameters menu. Enter to select that. Scroll to Parameter 204. The value of each parameter is displayed up here which makes it super quick and easy to see what’s in each parameter. Press Enter and change it to a 5 to reset the drive to 60 Hz operation. The bar graph shows you the progress and when it’s done, the drive restarts. Ok, let’s configure our motor. Enter to bring up the parameters menu and press Enter again to select the parameters group. Scroll to Parameter 401 which is the motor’s rated current – we see it’s currently 4.3 amps. Our motor’s faceplate tells us ours is 3.2 amps at 240 volts, so we enter into that parameter, change it to 3.2, Enter to accept. Parameter 402 is the motor's rated speed. Our motor is rated at 1725 RPM, so I’ll enter into that, change it to 1725, enter to accept. Acceleration is Parameter 100 and I know that’s in the basic parameter group, so I’ll hit escape to back up to the menu level, arrow to the basic group and look at that! It drops us right at the acceleration parameter. That’s so much quicker than scrolling. Enter to change it. This motor doesn’t have any load on it so let’s change the acceleration to something short to help speed up the video. How about 2 seconds. Enter to accept. Up arrow to deceleration and change it to 2 seconds too. Again, just so we don’t have to wait a long time for the motor to spin up or down during the video. Parameter 133 is the minimum speed parameter. Let’s make that 4 Hz just to be different. Enter to accept. Parameter 134 is the max speed. Let’s limit that to 30 Hz. Enter to accept. Press Escape twice to get back up to the top level. Hit the Run key and sure enough the drive ramps the motor to the 4 Hz minimum output frequency we just entered. Perfect. If I press the up arrow to increase the output frequency, then the motor responds accordingly. Of course, since we set the max frequency to 30 Hz, the drive won’t let us go past that. Exactly what we expect. The bar graph down here is showing the percent of rated current. Looks like around 60% of rated current. Our rated current was 3.2 amps, and 60% of that would be around 2 amps. If we drop into the parameter menus and arrow to the read menu, enter into that, and scroll to Parameter 003 – we can see the actual current. Yep, that’s about what we expected. By the way, Parameter 207 controls what the bar graph displays. Forward and reverse are controlled by this button. Motor ramps down and then back up in the other direction. Let’s stop the motor and escape back to the top-level menu. If I hold down the JOG button, the motor moves at whatever speed you put in the Jog Reference Frequency at Parameter 122. The default is 5 Hz. And I love that you can switch between local and remote right here on the keypad. These are the parameters associated with remote and local operations. Those are the basics. What’s next? That’s up to you of course. The hardware and configuration manuals are exceptionally well done, the configuration software is Free, and in just two pages, the Quick Start Guide shows you how to wire power, wire controls, and configure the associated parameters, and how to configure the drive for basic operation. And speaking of videos, you will only see a few videos for the WEG CFW500 drive just highlighting the unique or key advanced features that make it stand out. Why? Because with the exception of those advanced features, the WEG CFW500 drive uses the exact same parameters and configuration as the WEG CFW100 and CFW300 drives. And if you go to www.automationdirect.com/videos and search for “CFW” you’ll see we have tons of videos for those drives showing you things like how to quickly get up and running with the free configuration software, how to use the analog inputs and option modules, how to program the built-in PLC, three-wire control, dynamic braking, how to handle overcurrent, under-voltage, over-voltage; how to use digital I/Os, PID, etc. And again, while those are all done using the WEG CFW100 and 300 drives, you’ll find in most cases they will work the same way for the CFW500 drives. And of course, the videos for all of those drives also apply to the NEMA4X version of the CFW500 drive. Well, while that ought to be enough to get you going, know that we barely scratched the surface of all the things you can do with the CFW500 drives, so click here to learn more about the WEG Variable Frequency drives. 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