Are there any industry 'safety best practices' for safely shutting down a Modbus controlled Variable Frequency Drive, in case the Modbus master or the communication cable to the VFD slave fails?
Background: I have cobbled together a 1 HP three phase motor and a VFD unit. The VFD is controlled by a Windows laptop running a home brewed control software based on LabView. The Modbus connection between the VFD and the laptop is a RS-485 serial cable.
The motor will drive a 'horse walker', i.e. an excercise machine for horses. Which means there will be unsuspecting humans and animals within the machinery that need to be kept 100% safe under all circumstances. While the software runs fine, I am worried about what happens when the comm link to the VFD goes down due to a Windows crash or cable failure. As it stands now, it would just keep running indefinitely at the last set speed.
I haven't found anything resembling a 'dead man's switch' in the 185 pages of the VFD's manual. I am quite sure requiring a VFD to auto shut down on Modbus failure detection must a common request in any industry application, but i can't seem to find anything by googling...
Would you have any recommendations or experience on how to auto shut down VFDs? Thank you!
kind regards,
Michael Z
Background: I have cobbled together a 1 HP three phase motor and a VFD unit. The VFD is controlled by a Windows laptop running a home brewed control software based on LabView. The Modbus connection between the VFD and the laptop is a RS-485 serial cable.
The motor will drive a 'horse walker', i.e. an excercise machine for horses. Which means there will be unsuspecting humans and animals within the machinery that need to be kept 100% safe under all circumstances. While the software runs fine, I am worried about what happens when the comm link to the VFD goes down due to a Windows crash or cable failure. As it stands now, it would just keep running indefinitely at the last set speed.
I haven't found anything resembling a 'dead man's switch' in the 185 pages of the VFD's manual. I am quite sure requiring a VFD to auto shut down on Modbus failure detection must a common request in any industry application, but i can't seem to find anything by googling...
Would you have any recommendations or experience on how to auto shut down VFDs? Thank you!
kind regards,
Michael Z