Hydraulic Press

[Brad93]

right so you may of seen Kent’s thread about hydraulic presses.

I need to know what soft start will be suitable for this pump/motor.

May need one for our guillotine too. Electrician has quoted £400 odd quid and says we need one.

RS has Schneider for £200 ish and Siemens for £300 ish.

This is the motor - 11kW 3 phase
Will get a photo of the plaque tomorrow

 

[Turbo]

I assume by soft start that you mean that the motor will be 2 speed, starting on star for low speed & switching to delta for full speed, lowering the spike of startup current.

All you need for that are 3 contactors & a simple timer module, you could build one for a lot less than £200, depending on the quality of the components you use. It's been a good few years since I worked on one but its all fairly simple stuff, should be wiring diagrams online.

More info here.
https://electrical-engineering-portal.com/star-delta-motor-starter

 

[pressbrake1]

As above star delta. The hydraulics shouldn’t be on load when switched on anyway.
Is the guillotine hydraulic or flywheel

 

[knighty]

for a star delta starter all you need are 3 contactors and timer a little box to put them in and a bit of din rail, contactors about £40 each and timer probably £15 if you buy it all new... personally I'd get used stuff off ebay for about 360 total

or you can get a soft starter, something like this...
https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/soft-starts/0152772/
(I'd get one on ebay unless you need one quick)

I've got a couple of the above soft starts where I need a nice soft start, things with multiple chains/belts where they need to take up the tension and they're really nice

but for 11kw (bit under 15hp?) starting off load I'd just do whatever is cheapest... you hardly need a soft or star delta for that, in a pinch I've run much bigger than that starting dol (just turning it on with full power)

 

[Brad93]

You guys are beyond me with all this electrical talk I just wire L1, L2 and L3

The hydraulic pump I have no idea how it works the company we bought it from did say something about star-delta though.

The guillotine is flywheel off 9kW motor and makes our 22kva generator really bog down.

 

[Pete.]

Some of our gear uses Celduc soft starts. They are easy to install and very small. I'll enquire about them if you like.

 

[knighty]

before you buy anything, I think I might have a star delta starter I'm not going to use... won't be able to look and see if it's still there till tomorrow tho :-)

 

[Turbo]

I would imagine that those soft starts are simply a vfd/inverter.

 

[Johnnybravo]

Place I used to work for had a huge Danobat surface grinder with a 450mm diameter wheel,100mm wide. Used to pull 90A on start up. Fitted a soft start vfd from ABB. 20A was all it took to get it up to speed over 6 seconds..

 

[henry Kadzielski]

^^^ That's an electronic soft starter. That is what I use when fitting electrical equipment to boats. It has the ability to set the start current and time, these are much kinder to the supply than 'star delta ' starters

 

[daleyd]

There are a few options...

A "Star - Delta" starter is a "mechanical" 2 stage starter which uses relays and timers to control several contactors, the idea being the motor starts up in Star configuration and then switches over to Delta after a defined time. This prevents the large surge in current you get when starting "Direct On Line", that is to say start directly connected in Delta. These are cheap(ish) but you still end up with a high starting current.

A Soft Start is a current limiting device that gives a ramp up to the motor in a much more controlled way. It's "almost" like a VFD but without any ultimate speed control. For applications where you don't require control of speed and just want to give the motor an easier time when starting, or protect your supply from tripping then these are a good option. A good halfway option between a VFD and star - delta they will require some simple programming/configuration but generally all doable through the front keypad as you only need a few parameters.

Thirdly you could fit a VFD which gives the benefits of fully controllable ramps up/down etc plus speed control and all sorts of other fancy things. Downsides are that they are expensive and can be complex to configure.

I've used Telemecanique (Now Schneider Electric) AltiStart Soft Starters quite a bit in a previous job and never had any issues, but I would think any of the brand name ones would be fine for what you want. If there is an unloader valve in the hydraulic circuit you may want to connect that to the starter (Whichever type you use) to ensure the motor is fully up to speed before putting pressure on.

 

[knighty]

before you buy anything, I think I might have a star delta starter I'm not going to use... won't be able to look and see if it's still there till tomorrow tho :-)

I forgot all about this... and checking someone for someone else, I'll run check now, gimme a min!

 

[knighty]

found it, I can't see the data plate on the motor, but it's still wired to the bigger one of these two, the little one is 15kw so I think bigger one must be 20kw+ so more than enough for what you want

there's a timer in the box for it (which controls start up time) but it's not wired in

if it'll work for you I can wire it up and test it's all working... if the timer is duff I could get another and wire it in ready for you for cost of timer

(I don't want anything for it, just cost of post, it's no use to me)