“One thing I will say is Carrier is smart enough, Um I should be careful of saying that” That was hilarious

Motor control engineer here, i’d recommend keeping overload relays with you when patching in a temporary full voltage non reversing starter until the new VFD comes in. This way you at least have overcurrent protection for the motor. I’m sure carrier was relying on the ABB drive to perform this function, so without an overload relay that contactor is going to let the blower motor die a fiery death if something was to go wrong. Enjoyed the video!

That's not OCD man That's professionalism. And don't let anybody else tell you otherwise. That little bit of attention to detail separates you from the rest.

Here in New Jersey I work for a company that was installing units for a pharmaceutical chain. They were York rooftop units with Mitsubishi drives. We were having a high failure rate in areas that had a lot of brown outs. After doing a lot of research I found a company that was Manufacturing inline electric filters. Similar to what's on a mini split. After installing the inline electric filters and the new drives the problem was resolved.

Not a "fan" of the blower running 24/7..hahah i get it!

Always enjoying your videos bud!. I live in NorCal and I’ve never had a bad VFD. Crazy. Thanks for the videos.

Glad you chose to leave factory harnesses intact. Saves you tons of time when the VFD drives comes in. As usual, great video!

Awsome chris,love ur clean and honest work and also ur videos,love from india.

Had the same issue on a recent new install. As you said, VFD back ordered two weeks. Unit continued to operate, freezing coil and filters. Service call was for water dripping into restaurant. Ultimately the issue was VFD failure. When ice began to melt during off- cycle, water dripped down vent. The new VFD supplied, had a smaller footprint. Warranty replacement.

We have installed a lot of these carriers with the VFD’s in San Diego and we haven’t had any ABB failures on them that I am aware of, but most of them are 460v. Maybe that makes a difference. It always helps me to have an extra ABB display on my truck to help with setting the drive at startup. Most of the time we have to limit them below 60 HZ to get a proper air balance. Sometimes they even use them in Labs where we have to reprogram them to run 24/7 at a constant speed when they need make up air for fume hoods.

ABB drives are very reliable. They tolerate a great deal of dirty power. But they do not like water. And they need air circulation for cooling. I have worked extensively with ABB drives in the industrial automation business. They were my first recommendation for replacement even over Allen Bradley. So this failure, in my opinion, is the placement of the drive in the cabinet.

I inherited a roof full of these units recently and did find one bad VFD a couple of weeks ago. Today, there are two more and I have done the instant VFD bypass as you mentioned. I’ll likely do the contactor installation soon but for now they are running. Interesting that 2 of the 3 fans rotation needed reversal after VFD bypass. Thanks for the video and abundant information!

Good work, sir. I agreed that I notice about dirty power too since I’ve been repaired on commercial kitchen equipments most of them are using 208v and most of their microprocessors will gone bad as soon as summer hit. Great video as always sir.

Always like watching your videos keep up the good work

I ran into the same issue today first time. look it up after I’m home and here you are.

I worked maintenance at hospital . We had several vsd on several air handlers, chillers. Great for saving belts and pulleys. The bad if bad would almost always loose a drive . Earlier programming factory techs could . Then they plain just blow up sometimes .hopefully there more dependable now . Then even then they were in the thousands. Great video.

I had a bad VFD on the same type of unit your working on. I had to install a Contactor and a additional relay for the Heating mode. Worked like a charm.

At 2:47 are ya sure that is just dirt? It kinda looks like magic smoke skid marks to me!

Great job! I agree with you about replacing the drives. If it's going to be an issue with failing drives and getting replacement parts I would keep the contactors in there

Sir, you are an HVAC scholar and fantastic teacher.. I'm a mechanic at age 33 and still debating getting into this field even though I might be getting too old. Keep up the good work!

If those are anything like York, the output of the board that goes to the fan contactor on fixed speed units will go to a relay on the VFD unit. The relay will then close a contact on the drive allowing it to run. If there's something similar on those units you may be able to use that to power your contactor and essentially have a "stock" unit.

Thanks for your wonderful videos keep up great help 😁

Great video. I've had to bypass a few of these. You are not alone..lol. what I've done isright under the transformer theres a little square line voltage terminal block where the blower motor wires lead back to. If you pull that out, a contactor fits perfect. All the wires are on that block to connect to the contactor. Line and load.. And conveniently right next to the transformer theres a grey wire with a female connector on it. Its G from the board. . You can put that right to the coil of the contactor, Then grab common off the compressor contactor right next to it. It was designed that way I believe. for permanent bypass. Great job man

Great job again like always

Those VFD’s are very good that’s the only brand we use at my current job. Instead of ordering through carrier you should be able to order directly through ABB

When you said you didn’t know what to do for blower during heating I told myself. Just change the thermostat setting for tstat controls fan during heat and sure enough you said that. Love the videos🤙🏼

If you or any company in the commercial (maybe residential eventually) HVACR space wants to add a service that will help your customers that would be measure the shaft voltage on any equipment hooked to a VFD. Once the shaft voltage gets too high it will start destroying the bearings and the customer will start to report intermittent cooling failures and that will be the bearings going bad. Aegis and Fluke both sell the shaft voltage testing kit. Just sell them a clamp on shaft brush that can be easily replaced.

We have been having the exact same issue with these carrier vfds down here in Florida again super dirty power down here too we have bypassed sooo many of them but down here we have the ioflex board that controls everything for EMS crap lol gotta love when they over engineer crap and it ends up wasting the power that they were hoping to safe lol the fraction of the power they save with a vfd is eaten up on the first service call lol great job Chris

I have the same issues with those VFDs and we have been bypassing them. The problem with bypassing them is that you will burn the blower motors if you lose one of the power legs. The motors are not (internally) thermally protected. I had to replace 3 motors at the same location where the drives were bypassed. To be fair, these were all ICP units but I believe they are all the same technology. FYI, on the 8000 thermostat you can find the access code in the dealer info, you don"t have to remove the stat from the base plate.

Love to here someone else who has good OCD like me. Plus geek out all you want Chis, I for one enjoy it!!!

Our vfd s are mounted in electrical section of our chillers. Cabinet is also temperature controlled with axial fan and a little heater.

if they are back ordered by over 200 units on something like this there is DEFINITLY something funny going on here

California and the awesome laws we have to follow . I am a battery guy , we have prop 65 warnings on everything ! Dam near even the urinals !! Cali requires us to make chargers that are 24 , 36 , 48 , 72 and 80 volts ranging 200 to 2000 amp hour rating , pull less that 10 watts when in standby mode !! Plenty of other rules to follow. But yeah ........ Most of our vfd drives take the hit when it is dirty power , and the units have line input filter installed already. I agree that we will have more issues with how sensitive units are becoming.

You’re not the only one who likes to trim wires to equal length. As for tightening terminals, I get them good and tight, then break them loose and re-tighten to ensure I’m snugging against pre-crushed wire and terminal washers.

i personally would like to hear you "geeking out" more on low power issues, today is first time I heard of a VFD but thats why I am here, & thats to learn as much as I can. as for voltage, a friend rented a shop some years ago, had 96 volts on 120 circuit, & around 180 on 240, but his was due to a breaker box mounted to wall with huge amount of corrosion & owner refused to fix. but I couldnt mig weld there, my welder refused to work, but it did blow diodes trying to work, but I was able to use a transformer Lincoln stick welder without issue. but I would like hearing more on dirty power

Chris I had the same problen at a feed mill Tyson new unit 2 months old. But no heat cooled MCC room worked great did not have to change rotation

I had same issue on one a couple months ago. I managed to get the drive. Had to spend some time with tech support to program it. They do not come with the program but they do come with the front lcd panel so you can do it.

I replaced an ABB drive in a five ton Carrier unit a month ago. All the rest of the units had the Danfoss drives, and they are all up and running.

I wanna see more mitsubishi A/C units! And I agree, when you go from tough automotive to cheaper CMOS tech, the voltages are more sensitive because they're not designed to handle wide changes in power delivery.

Ah i see there are the mentioned questions i asked in the stream before the last one ^^ (Usage of people count for airflow control) I Like it

Chris, get them VFDs repaired bud! There’s no question you’ll have a regional repair shop for industrial customers. Just choose somewhere that gives you a repair warranty, does a load test and gives you a service report. I’d be surprised if the drive was being affected solely by low supply voltage, typically they’ll run until the DC link voltage is too low and then they’ll trip before reaching the field weakening point. Power quality could be a cause, especially overvoltage. Do the drives blow the supply fuses or just stop working? Are they all the same serial number range (could be a firmware issue!). I’d love to give you some support on this, I’ll drop you an email 😁😁

As an old "fridgy" it seems to me that a lot if this "new" technology is there for "technology" sake. Clean up the power supply (energy company) and a lot if these issues should disappear. Love all the new design diagnostic tools and the new gauges, vac pumps etc. Love the content, keep up the good fight!.

This dude is the guru of hvac. Love it.🫡🫡🫡🫡🫡🫡😏

Sew Eurodrive probably makes the absolute best VFD's on the market. We have a MTC battery changing machine that uses 3 of them in a non-cooled, enclosed NEMA control panel cabinet where this machine operates in a warehouse that is not conditioned at all and it easily gets up to 120 degrees inside on very hot days and this machine has been going strong for 5 years now without any issues with the VFD's.

I love the videos you produce. I design and program control systems for wash down food environments. If you look at the manual they recommend max running temperature is around 110 degrees F and AC units run way hotter than that of the roof. There also could be a problem with the water as well. If you look at the ABB 255 serials it is a full nema 4x enclosure for extreme applications. Or yaskawa has good 4x drives as well and a little bit cheaper. If anyone has questions on vfds or any other controls related things let me know :)

ABB usually has good equipment. But there are a lot of factors. Like you mentioned.

During my Commercial HVAC class we had a icemaker that was having issues with the control board, (no they didn't tell us what is wrong with it, that was our job, to troubleshoot shoot), we found out , at least I did, it was a control board issue, looked up the price and the board is 765 bucks, I never could wrap my head around just how expensive some of them parts are being new to this, so I told the instructor, how you can just repair most boards just simply by locating the damaged part on the board and replace it, he said good thought, now prove it. I located the failed relay, ordered it by googling the product number that is usually on the component that is on the PCB(control board), order it for 15 bucks, replaced it, put the board back in and boom, it worked, I do understand you may not have time to take the vfd apart, look for damage on the board inside, unsold, replace component, solder it back, but that could be a option. I bet anything, that is it's the small capacitor on the PCB that is hanging down in front of the vents that you clearly see in the video, there be a X ontop of that small capacitor which if split open/puffed up, it would be bad, if you have a solder tool, NOT MAPP gas kind either that some would think but electronic devices type, you can replace it. Just a thought and what I personally experience with.

Just did this on a Carrier 10 ton unit. this is the second time I've had the VFD go out. Was told 3-5 months before we can get another. Did about the same as you did, tho we did install a 3 phase disconnect that uses normal fuses as its a pain to find the fuses they use.

Nice video to learn

Bro Chris Don't pull heavy loads with your hand if it's hurt. I see some wrest holder in 4:30. Its been a month that I recover from an injury. Be careful Bro.

Classic carrier , I needed a board last winter in a huge cold snap, couldnt get one for 2 months.

Funny how carrier says you have to order the VFD from them due to programming, but there is no real programming. You just have now how to program the ABB VFD

We generally use these (ICM Controls ICM450 3-Phase Monitor) on many compressors and AHU's. Might be worth looking into to save your customers some money.

Line reactors could help with dirty incoming power as well as reducing VFD harmonics. As stated in the video, moisture is not a VFD's friend. I believe VFD's will have a much better longevity when installed off of the equipment, on a wall of a mechanical room, away from high humidity levels, vibrations and dusty inverter cooling air. We have retrofitted many ABB drives over the years in this fashion and have yet to get a call-back . Of course, keeping the line and load wires apart (in different conduit or not bundled together) is another important aspect of installing VFD's. Twisted wires are preferable on the load side as well. The devil is in the details. I get why manufacturer's install their VFD's in such a fashion; trying to keep costs down by not redesigning a package unit casing yet providing adequate cooling for the VFD and meeting electrical and safety conformities. As a first time comment on one of your videos, well done! I have been watching you for a while now and love seeing how you handle things south of the border.

Good vid. I see the same thing here in the south. Every one I seen is a piece of it

I would love to see a video were you and nor-cal Dave work together.. OCD working with laid back sufer dude.. But both of you have pride in your work

ABB Makes solid drives. Im a VFD service tech and all i do is install drives and service them 24/7. First thing is the Vfds do not have a long life inside of a blower section do to moisture buildup, that particular drive is nema 1 and is not rated for a high moisture environment , second thing is that if you have dirty power in that area, install a 3-5% line impedance reactor on the input of the VFD.

A small observation.... it is not a VFD drive, it is a VFD. The D is for drive, so you are saying Variable Frequency Drive Drive.

I love those danfoss drives

Love the Squeel as the fan motor started.. Guess as you said.. belt was loose. Life people said below.. stuff on fan of VFD looked like smoke from it burning out. I would say they put it in the fan area so the air helps cool it? I would assume the blower area is more conditioned then outside air.

Chris, You may want to try a local VFD repair shop. I like the ABB and Yaskawa drives. Yaskawa has some of the best technical support I’ve experienced from an OEM. I’d consider relocating the drive, maybe to the return section, unless it serves a kitchen. I suspect your correct regarding the high humidity in the supply section causing failure. I understand you have relatively low humidity in your area so that should help even if the economizer is open. You also have high ambient temps but the economizer shouldn’t be open far enough for the MAT in the return to be an issue when the economizer is open.

I can tell you from experience on working with lots of VFD systems the thing that usually kills them is heat. Most VFDs are only rated to 40 deg C ambient (104 deg F). For systems that drive high HP motors, it is common to see VFDs in their own electrical enclosure with a separate small air conditioner on the side of the box to keep the temperature of the enclosure below 100 deg F. When this small air conditioner fails is when you often start seeing the drives fail soon after. If you want to find out how hot it is getting around where the VFD is, you can buy these stickers that change color when a certain temperature is reached.

12:01 - That stuff is mostly why I watch. So the more technical the better for me.

We installed a large carrier with VFD drive just last summer and the drive went bad at the beginning of this summer! Didn’t even make it one year. I say get rid of them.

Carrier is infamous for its inability to stock parts for their units. It is especially bad on their "new" stuff. It is easier for them to make everything a factory order and charge more for shipping. Engineers have ZERO real word experience! Stupidity seems to be a prerequisite for employment.

I'm wondering if another contactor could be used to switch the van other to high speed with the second stage compressor. I used to work at a rubber goods factory in a suburb near me (I live in Australia and we have 240v). With everything in the factory off we would have 300v on the 240v supply. The factory had two paralleled 750kva transformers.

I have installed a new Carrier with this ttpe of VFD with the same results of failing. Was on the roof for theee months and the ABB controler failed. Told the factory about this issue and it seems to be news to them when I reported it. Did the exact same thing you did Chris with the contactor.

If you have a power problem with 3 phase were you read 460 across all three legs, but to ground 1 of the 3 legs shows 0v, then there's 2 screws on the side of the drive ( I forget what there makes as) but those need to be loosened

Here is a thought - order up a system with NO ELECTRICAL CONTROLS on it - then draw up what you want and have a UL 508 panel shop build you what works - then just hook up to your fans compressor and pressure switches - dont mount the control panel on the unit and it will last forever. When I was in the business I figured about 80% of my calls were of an electrical nature. You dont have to be an engineer to design something that works better. I have been designing electrical controls for 25 years and had a UL 508 panel shop to build them.. your a smart guy with experience that you could build a better mouse trap with. Most guys who invent something that works well is someone with experience in the field who recognizes a better way... go for it.

It'd be interesting to tear that vfd apart and find the root cause of failure. You are correct about microprocessor supply thresholds by the way :)

One aftermarket solution you might look into is a liquid-cooled VFD. Or, look into remotely mounting the VFD inside the building, where humidity is less likely to be a problem.

It’s crazy it took 3 months to get the same VFD and i installed it last week and the blower didn’t turn on till second stage was calling and only keep it at 10%. I love vfd drives but hate those

Nice. We found a few carriers with VFD problems too. ABB. 🤷🏽‍♂️

Good fix. Just ran into the same problem. Makes me a little angry on a two month old unit.

Chris, I'm am sure you your problem is the moisture/water droplets inside the VFD on circuit board is shorting out something. Most of the VFD's have protection inside, there may be a reset or fuses. In my years of experience with VFD's, they are very reliable. I would relocate the drive out of the blower compartment. Also, most VFD'a have AC power conditioners/ they will cleanup most dirty input supply power. You may want to look into an additional power line filtering, but I don't think that's necessary in this situation. they are a bit pricey. But I believe your problem is the VFD needs to be reloacted. Good luck And keep up the great work. Tony

There is absolutely nothing wrong in having pride in your workmanship. I too, like the wires the same length before fitting a connector. It shows that you care. I’ve seen VFD’s sold as a particular make opened up to find an inferior (and smaller capacity) unit packaged to resemble an OEM unit. From China. Draw your own conclusions.

You can probably get those VFDs or a pretty direct equivalent from some supplier like Grainger or Automation Direct off the shelf and not have to wait three months. I might be inclined to get one rated for a few more HP than the original if possible, since that looked like magic smoke to me on the top of the unit, not dust. I'd also explore mounting one outside the fan plenum to avoid the condensation, but the downside of that with So Cal roof mounting is possibly running the unit outside its high temp limit.

Have you tried Baltimore air coil or Echelmeier company they sell vfd usually few weeks to get me one.

I agree with the consensus here. Your issue is with the moisture more so than the voltage. If the moisture is bad enough I'd expect it to kill even simple components like a contactor (which you wisely put in the control section). As far a voltage issues are concerned, a VFD is far more likely to handle an undervoltage than an induction motor due to the compensation that is made in the electronics. In fact, if that VFD is designed to run on Japan's 200 volt three phase, the tolerance would likely allow as low as 180.

We had one today that went out but power cycle came back on. Then breaker started tripping immediately two days later first stage compressor failed. No short to ground but didn’t ohm out equally.

The unit can control the fan operation in heating mode via the IFO wire at the end of the white connector on the ignition control board. Connect IFO to the contactor. The G feeds into the connector as well, and you will have a conventional unit drive for heating and cooling.

Maybe put a light across the control terminals to avoid sending a spike when the coil drops out.

Man great video but I would be totally lost on the wiring some of the air handlers here at work are nordine and the motor heads are going bad

Ty

I’m guessing they decided to put the VFD in the air steam instead of the control enclosure to help with keeping it cool. It getting cool enough to cause moisture to condense is weird.

Don’t trip I have the craziness too bruh. That’s why I enjoy watching

Hey there... in Germany we use drives from SEW-Eurodrive - they Are a Little More expensive but i havent seen one fail... and they really take a beating at out Factory... metal flakes, Phase Shift, Phase loss, voltage drops and Heat to to 60degree celsius and they simply wont break

VFD drives are notorious for failure in general, the newer ones more so than the older ones due to the cheapness of the components. VFD drives are high power, high current and high frequency switching devices and due to this, its highly sensitive to voltage and current fluctuations. 10 millisconds or more of overcurrent or overvoltage can destroy the final power transistor IGBT section which is likely whats happened. I can only assume, but maybe they put it in the blower cabinet for cooling reasons, air circulation. But I agree, it will accumulate moisture. And again, high voltage high current + water = kaboom. Highly doubt the circuit board is conformal coated either.

Before you even said anything and was talking about VFD failure, I said moisture. Moisture will kill them quicker than anything else. They can take heat (within reason), they can take dirty power, they can even take being banged around to a certain extent. One thing they absolutely CANNOT tolerate is moisture. They convert AC to DC then back to AC anyway, so dirty power coming in isn't really that big a problem. Hell, you could lose a phase and they'd still function, provided the load isn't pulling a great deal of power out of them. The line side of these things are more or less just a rectifier unit, which then stores that DC power in a giant capacitor. Then it creates it's own waveform for the motors via IGBTs. They *DO NOT* like moisture and it will kill them. If you can keep them dry, you'll keep them happy. Too bad you couldn't install them in the stream of the cool air the unit itself is producing. That nice, cool, dry air will keep them going and happy as long as you please. I guess it doesn't really help in the winter, but the air tends to be more dry in the winter anyway. Tl;dr It's not the drive's fault, it's the placement and/or their working environment.

Hi Chris: Can you send the VFD to a electronic repair facility and get them back in a few days? I have a 150 hp drive fail in a water plant due to overheating and moisture, as well as several small ones in a pump station due to voltage issues. Finally put a constant voltage transformer in the line and no more failures. Also why not leave the contactors in the circuit and forget the VFD's. Maybe come up with a two stage contactor arrangement for hi and lo speeds. Great video. Many thanks.

Question on tue vfd board the jumperd jw2 and jw1 do they have to be cut?

Corny.. you're not really a FAN of that 😂sorry that was childish. Good work, I always learn from your videos!

Power dips have been killing our vfd drives on York's

The other thing I’ve found out is that a lot of carrier units don’t come with a controller on the Danfoss VFDs and you have to order/buy one to control or fix the vfd.

Do these units have a phase monitoring device? That would be the best way to protect the VFD’s again failing power or low voltage.

When I was a a control tech... we had a saying.... it gets SCARRIER w/ CARRIER

Hm. No wonder it fails, only getting all three of the top electronic failures, dirt,moisture and ofcourse heat.

OCD HVAC mechanics, get the customer up,and running, think you,know the issue, spend the rest of the night, looking for other issues, it’s what we do

How did you diagnose the vfd vs the vfd control board in the control panel?

You’re right! Not a good idea to install the VFD in the airstream, exposed to humidity. They do it to keep it cool though. Realistically the VFD should be rated for a humid & dusty environment, mostly likely in a NEMA4 enclosure, which is more expensive.