Preventive Maintenance with Mitsubishi Electric FR-A800 and FR-F800 a.c. inverters
The intelligent functions in the latest version of Mitsubishi Electric's FR-A800 and FR-F800 a.c. inverters can help to reduce unplanned downtime by detecting problems in your bearings, motors, pumps, fans or conveyors, before they cause a failure.
The cost of unplanned downtime can be devastating for any manufacturing company, which makes predictive maintenance a hot topic at the moment. It can reduce unnecessary maintenance when everything is working fine and allows you to focus your resources on repairing or replacing critical components that are nearing the end of their usable life - long before they actually fail and stop production.
Large Mitsubishi a.c. Inverters Now Have Built-in Ethernet Communication as Standard 
To Maintain or Don't Maintain, that is the Question?
Companies usually fall into one of two camps; those that regularly maintain motors, fans, pumps etc. whether they need it or not, and others who wait for something to go wrong before they repair or replace the affected part. Obviously, regular maintenance is better than none, but both are really inneficient and waste valuable time and money.
Mitsubishi Electric FR-A800 and FR-F800 a.c. Inverters can monitor variables such as output current and torque, alerting you to any unusual readings that may indicate a potential fault. Alternatively, if you prefer to use a time-based maintenance schedule, they can log actual run hours or number of starts to make your life easier.
Preventive Maintenance in a Conveyor Application
In normal use, each conveyor uses a certain amount of current that will vary within a pre-determined range. When a fault occurs, such as an increase in the load caused by worn bearings, this can be detected through a higher output current. Conversely, cracks in the conveyor belt will cause the load to decrease (reducing the output current), alerting you to the problem, long before you actually see the problem.
Mitsubishi Electric FR-A800 and FR-F800 a.c. Inverters can monitor the output current, detecting unusual readings that indicate a potential fault. Best of all, fault detection is easy. There are no programs to install, it only requires the setting of parameters and can be adjusted to meet the requirements of the system and customers’ needs.
Preventive Maintenance in Pump and Fan Applications
In a similar way, the relationship between speed and load characteristics (torque) during normal operation of a fan or pump can be prerecorded and compared with load characteristics during actual operation. Not only does this help detect worn components, it also helps you to detect other problems such as blocked filters and pipes.
F800 Cleaning Function in Fan and Pump Applications
The Mitsubishi Electric FR-F800 is a dedicated a.c. Inverter for fan and pump applications, with specialised functions such as the cleaning (also known as de-ragging) function, which enables forward/reverse rotation and stopping of the motor to remove dirt and foreign matter on the fan or pump impeller.
Working together with the fault detection function, the increased load caused by the dirt or foreign matter can be detected, automatically starting the cleaning function when an overload is detected. If this process clears the problem, the load charateristics will return to normal levels and operation can continue. An alarm will be triggered if the problem isn't cleared and requires additional maintenance support.
Looking for more information? We can help with that...
You can see the full range of FR-A800 and FR-F800 a.c. Inverters with compatible electric motors in our a.c. Inverters and Motors Shortform Catalogue - download your copy here. If you would like further information about Preventive Maintenance or Mitsubishi Electric a.c. inverters, call 01254 685900 and our Technical Support Engineers will be happy to help.
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