Best NEMA 4 VFD?

[TGTimm]

Good points, Unferm.

I'll take a look at the decel curves on our VFDs. Pretty sure they are all set to decel and accel at about the same rate--30 sec to full speed or to full stop.

We have a few VFDs that are dedicated to only one motor--Vorlauff pump, mash tun agitator, mill. The rest are stations for use with portable pumps. This works very well, keeps the VFDs up fairly high on the wall so out of most danger and reduces the bulk on the pump carts. However, with a mix of different size pumps, it means you only have motor overload protection for the largest motors.

We don't really need to have several different size portable pumps that are VFD-driven, but, once again, legacy equipment that was here when I started.

[Starcat]

Industrial configurations

This is good to know. It looked like some Fisher-Price stuff, but I thought maybe someone would have your type of useful input.

It seems like everyone active on this tread is pretty well versed, but for any others reading, do yourselves a favor and "wind down" your VFDs when you are operating them. Don't just stop them at full speed. If you are working with geared reductions or very large motors this is super important. They will basically act as generators and create current that can damage sensitive components.

One way around the issue of a larger VFD is to hard-wire it to a location, like the end of the cellar. Then you just have the pump plug into a receptacle on the VFD. Put another near your brewhouse or wherever needed. Disadvantage is you have to walk over to the VFD for operations, but its actually a bit safer in most cases anyhow. Advantage is you can plug in multiple pumps (not at the same time) into the same VFD. In other words, your VFD does not become a dedicated unit.

This is riding the line on Keeping the installation in code from an electrical standpoint. Good practice means the load wiring on the drive is fixed and hardwired. Otherwise anyone could plug anything with the same NEMA plug config into that outlet which will not run just anything. Cart Pumps have to go between buildings at times. Its also very bad to disconnect the load side of a drive when its running. If its just yourself and a select group handing the equipment, maybe it can work out. It would be dangerous in this setting.