Boston Gear VFD manual

I've got one that google didn't seem too interested in:

Recently bought a VFD for my Hendey Project. It's old but unused and came at a good price. It's a:

Boston Gear KL series
ACEKL-230V-3P-5HP

I'm looking for a manual for it to help with connections and parameter settings. If one can't be located, perhaps someone with experience could help me out.

The application is of course 3 phase input and output going to a 5HP motor. The connections I'm not sure about are that I want to connect an external potentiometer to it, as well as an external forward/off/reverse switch. I'm trying to use the VFD in place of a drum switch and don't want to use the VFD's buttons for routine operation. Other than the line in/line out connections, the other terminals are marked 1 through 18.

Possibly these?

User's guide - http://www.altraliterature.com/pdfs/ACE20UG(Aug03).pdf
Technical manual - http://www.altraliterature.com/pdfs/ACE20TM.pdf

Looks like similar products, anyway.

And here's a post from 2008 in which information was given about obtaining the actual manual.

http://www.practicalmachinist.com/v...ace-kl-technical-manual-voltage-curve-165976/

Boston Gear was bought by Fincor, who was bought by Saftronics almost 20 years ago, then Saftronics was bought by Emmerson a decade ago, that's how they are remotely associated. But when they were Boston Gear all by themselves, they didn't make their own drives, they were brand-labeled from Motortronics. The ACEK series was the Motortronics K-Plus series drive. That drive because obsolete before the rise of the internet, so the only way to get a manual is if someone scanned one. All of the BG / Fincor drives started with "ACE", but basically because they were ALL brand labeled by whomever gave them the best pricing at any given time, none of them program or connect the same. So the ACE-20 referenced above is not the same or even similar. I think the ACE-20 was post-Saftronics, who at that time was brand-labeling GE/Fuji drives prior to being absorbed by Emmerson, who cancelled all previous brand-label agreements from all generations and iterations of existing product line in favor of the Emmerson Control Techniques products..

A more important point: that drive was already obsolete when I started at Motortronics in 1993, so that means it is likely in the neighborhood of 25 years old. I would expect that the capacitors in the drive are either no good, or will be almost as soon as you apply power to it, especially if the machine and drive have been disconnected (or never connected?) for over a year. There is a procedure called "capacitor reforming" that you can do BEFORE you first apply power to it, but if you already have, it's too late. I would not put a lot of effort into trying to save it, nobody will have parts for it any more. If you have to replace the caps, the components cost and your time will likely exceed the cost of just buying a new cheap and more capable drive.

Jraef said:

the components cost and your time will likely exceed the cost of just buying a new cheap and more capable drive.

Click to expand...

I'd say "certainly" rather than "likely", as the rest of the unit would still be a shelf-stale and age-tired 'orphan' even AFTER new cap bank.

Also not up to present-day protect-thyself and protect OLD motor technology, nor control of radiated nastiness.

Any major brand new(er) one would be closer to configure and forget. Look for presence of a reputable Warranty, else also 'too old'.

You saved more than enough on the rather useful lathe itself, so...



Bill

From what I see in the manuals, the terminals for the ACE 20 series are similar, but are not marked all the same. On the KL series they are marked numerically, whereas the 20 series has initials of the functions and such. It looks close enough to assume that the connections are in the same order....

For what it may be worth, I have an ACE 20 and manual. I don't know how much they relate, but I have had it on my Boston Digital CNC mill for what must be close to 20 years and have never done anything at all to it. It just keeps on running. I can scan the manual if you need it.

Bill

9100 said:

For what it may be worth, I have an ACE 20 and manual. I don't know how much they relate, but I have had it on my Boston Digital CNC mill for what must be close to 20 years and have never done anything at all to it. It just keeps on running. I can scan the manual if you need it.

Bill

Click to expand...

If kept powered periodically, caps can last 25+ years. The problem with old stuff is that people don't realize that the electrolytic caps are chemically unstable if not powered, so they lose their properties when the film layers inside give up their thin coating of oxides into the electrolyte that fills the spaces between the layers. The procedure is called "reforming" because you apply a low voltage to them and gradually increase it over time, allowing the chemical reactions inside to form the oxide layers again; to "re-form" them. The process of the oxide dissipation takes a long time, so if you power up a VFD once per year or so, it will not have lost enough oxide yet to allow damage to the film and will reform the oxide layers to the desired level again fairly quickly.

Jraef said:

If kept powered periodically, caps can last 25+ years. The problem with old stuff is that people don't realize that the electrolytic caps are chemically unstable if not powered, so they lose their properties when the film layers inside give up their thin coating of oxides into the electrolyte that fills the spaces between the layers. The procedure is called "reforming" because you apply a low voltage to them and gradually increase it over time, allowing the chemical reactions inside to form the oxide layers again; to "re-form" them. The process of the oxide dissipation takes a long time, so if you power up a VFD once per year or so, it will not have lost enough oxide yet to allow damage to the film and will reform the oxide layers to the desired level again fairly quickly.

Click to expand...

You are anodizing the aluminum foil. The electrolyte attacks the anodizing when there is no voltage on it. Modern capacitors are much improved over the first ones. I have a battery eliminator from the 20s that has a capacitor that needs to be reformed ever time I turn it on.

Reforming capacitors is often necessary with old radios, complicated by rectifier tubes that don't conduct until the applied line voltage gets high enough to start the filaments emitting electrons. To do it right, the tube should be replaced with semiconductor diodes so the rectified voltage starts up as soon as voltage is applied. Some people replace all the electrolytic capacitors in an old radio, but I think that is overkill.

The capacitors in my ACE 20 have been lit up at least every few weeks for the time I have owned it, which may have contributed to its longevity.

Bill

Piece of trivia that has a bearing on this.....

In the old days of radio, there was a rectifier type that was made like an electrolytic capacitor. Basically many aluminum plates each in a cup of liquid of a type like electrolyte. The layer was formed and broken down once per cycle of AC, to rectify the 60 Hz. That's fast forming!

Now, the detail on this is that each "cell" could stand only a few volts, so while the layer was formed quickly, it was not the sort of layer that would be of use in a capacitor, which must stand up to several hundred volts in a single layer. So re-forming a capacitor takes a bit longer than a few milliseconds.

If the capacitor is old enough, it may be dry, the electrolyte may no longer be a good conductive liquid. In that case, it will not re-form, nor will it have a capacitance reasonably near to its rating,

6 years later....

I had installed this VFD and it still works great, however the lack of remote control meant that it didn't really do what was needed (speed control). The lathe has been down for other repairs for awhile, but I've been looking for a manual for the VFD periodically, with the last resort when necessary being to just replace it all together.

Then! I found another new-old-stock Boston Gear ACE KL series VFD on eBay... with a manual! The other VFD is the wrong voltage/HP for anything I'll need, but same manual, so I'm going to make a couple photocopies and if anyone needs a manual for the old KL series inverters, message me and I'll email you a PDF.

Why replace a perfectly good VFD when you can wait 6 years for for the literature to surface?