Retrofits

When you need support..

Retrofit and upgrades

Drives and Automation have extensive retrofit experience, removing old or obsolete AC and DC drive control systems and replacing them with new.  The requirement to upgrade old or obsolete Inverter control systems is inevitable as down time and instability increases after a number of years. You may also wish to change your AC or DC motors, your drive systems or both.  Our engineers have extensive experience in retrofit, working closely with you to determine requirements and timescales to ensure minimum interruption to operations. 

Cost effective solutions

In a typical retrofit project, existing cabling, motors and cabinets often remain in use, while the drive or drive system is replaced either completely or partly. Retrofitting is typically carried out during planned production shutdowns, without causing extra production downtime. Following retrofit your application will be working as good as it did when new, in many cases it will be working better.

Take a look at some of our work to date:

• Removal of a Mannesman system that had reached the end of it's life and could no longer be supported.
• Replaced with a Control Techniques Mentor cutter drive and Control Techniques servo motors and amplifiers.  A Siemens S7 PLC system with a touch screen provides operator control.

• Removal of an unreliable Pourtier D.C drive control system along with it's obsolete drives and PLC equipment.
• Replaced with an Allen Bradley CompactLogix PLC / PanelView HMI/SCADA and Control Techniques D.C and A.C drive controllers.

• Removal of an outdated slipring motor control system.
• Replaced with Control Techniques Unidrive inverters, an Allen Bradley Micrologix PLC along with a safety relay and Cresall dynamic braking resistors. All housed in a Rittal stainless steel cabinet mounted next to the control pulpit.

• Removal of the existing slipring control system 
• Replaced with Allen Bradley and Pilz PLC systems and Control Techniques inverter drives, the project retained the existing slipring motors to provide smooth, variable speed control over all crane axes.

• Removal of an existing fan and control system.
• Replaced with a new fan and an Allen Bradley PLC, inverter and overloads with an Intouch SCADA package handling diagnostics.

• Removal of an obsolete slip ring motor control system
• Replaced with a modern ABB ACS800 regenerative inverter, supply transformer and motor