# Invertek VFD Review



## Jlarson (Jun 28, 2009)

Who supplied it, customer, equipment vendor?


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## micromind (Aug 11, 2007)

Customer. 

It replaced an older drive but I don't know what brand. The old one was already gone when I got there.


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## John Valdes (May 17, 2007)

Rob. Are the fans powered from external source or are they powered from the control board?
I have seen some drives (Baldor is one or was one) that use control voltage.
Should these fans get gunked up, they draw high current and deplete the control voltage.
It was one of my biggest complaints with Baldor.
ABB on the other hand required 120 volt external supplied fan voltage that did not interfere with onboard control voltage.


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## micromind (Aug 11, 2007)

John Valdes said:


> Rob. Are the fans powered from external source or are they powered from the control board?
> I have seen some drives (Baldor is one or was one) that use control voltage.
> Should these fans get gunked up, they draw high current and deplete the control voltage.
> It was one of my biggest complaints with Baldor.
> ABB on the other hand required 120 volt external supplied fan voltage that did not interfere with onboard control voltage.


Internally powered. 

There'a certainly an advantage to externally powered ones, but more than once I've been called to troubleshoot a drive that trips on heatsink overtemp only to discover that the fans were never connected. 

P.S. Whoever corrected the title, thanks!!


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## Wirenuting (Sep 12, 2010)

Has anyone had luck with these drives? Are they reliable?

Someone here is trying to switch us to them and away from Toshiba, Yakasawa and such. 
i prefer the larger ones for installs and not these tiny compact units. 
Are they worth the trouble?


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## SWDweller (Dec 9, 2020)

Always remember, small usually means you need a second drive for a spare if this is critical process. Small always means to me " no user serviceable parts"


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## MotoGP1199 (Aug 11, 2014)

I have installed 5 of there drives in the last last year and a half. Two of them were 3 HP nema 4x, one was 7.5 HP nema 4x, and two were 20 HP nema 4x. The cost was about half the price of others with a nema 4x rating and the customer wanted to try them. The oldest 2 are almost about 1.5 years old. I have had no issues with any of them so far, 3 are mounted outdoors and 2 in rooms with chemicals. I agree they are easy to program but are limited if you needed really complicated programming. I usually have a PLC if it gets complicated and usually just use the analog input for speed control and some digital inputs. I started using them as I could get them within a week and they were cheap enough to give them a shot. If any fail I will update.

EDIT:
One of the downsides. With the MACRO programming they had on the smaller drive I could only have one preset analog speed. There were options for multiple preset speeds for a specific hertz but I was only able to do one preset speed controlled by a flow meter. I ended up having a preset analog speed controlled by the flow meter and a set speed (specific hertz) for there after hour usage. Customer was happy and I didn't have to add a PLC or more expensive flowmeter.


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