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AC Motor Reference Kits

From International Rectifier exist two Reference Kits for Motor design.

IRADK31 use 2A 500V Mosfets and a PIC Controller for BLDC IRADK10 use 10A 600V IGBT for induction motor

We ordered the IRADK31 kit and experience was negative for several diffrent SW and HW reasons. Current limiting is done by the DC bus current only and the connected single phase current feedbacks are not implemented inside firmware at all. It seems, they have stopped the project at IRF becouse the firmware writers failed for unknown reasons. Probably the PIC controller reaction time is much too slow to protect the semiconductors in case of short circuit.

There is some more hope for the IRADK10 kit for induction motors. Unfortunately this kit was already obsolete in 2005. Its brief PDF documentation has been written in 2002 and is still Rev1. We also failed to find a dealer with a IRADK10 at stock. It seems that kit was also only available for a period < 2 years.

If there is somebody in the world with a IRADK10 kit in the drawer, it would be nice to share his experience. Even a copy of a readable diagramm and the firmware of included CD would be helpfull for examination.

Motorola also offered a small induction motor reference kit (with 58F600 hybrid CPU) but this one seems also obsolete.

There are reference boards using the Mitsubishi IGBT Modules but without any microcontroller, current limiting or PWM puls generation.

Any obsolete and used kit in the drawer ? Any more ideas for small induction motor reference kits ?

Reply to
Jürgen Veith
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This is a long shot in the dark. Maytag, once known as a high quality manufacturer of major appliances in the US, made a clothes washer with a fractional horsepower 3-phase motor and a little VFD in the form of a small printed circuit made by a Japanese company, Matsushita perhaps.

Your options might be to reverse engineer the VFD if you could find one or buy the module. That's about all I know.

Reply to
Jim Stewart

Another thing is the ST7MC from STM. I know the ST7 from a previous project with USB and we even have a emulator. But the Firmware supplied for USB was completly waste and I had to begin from the scratch. Nevertheless there are some good descriptions in the ST7MC controller datasheet and its applications on how back EMF, space vector generation and current limiting works in detail but I doubt I like to have several ST7 for several axis in my application.

Mainly I am not shure if I need all those features. I have no experience on how the torque decreases when using block commutation (always 2 coils on) instead sine wave vector space commutation (always 3 coils on). I have no experience of the benefits of meassuring real coil current instead transistor current or even only dc bus current.

My application only needs about 10 speeds up to 100%, a fix soft start ramp and is not torque critical. Therefore I hope its ok to do the commutation up to 50 Hz by firmware for 6 digital outputs and use a simple OP for current limitation by HW. Maybe the current limitation is not good for semiconductor protection and only the motor will be protected.

Reply to
Jürgen Veith

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