We have been using Danfoss and ABB variable speed drives on 2.5KW to 20KW water pumps up till now. We have been offered Teco AC variable speed drives at a good price and we were wondering what other peoples experience has been like with them

 

"Teco" is actually TECO/Westinghouse, the successor to Westinghouse Heavy
Motor division, located in Round Rock, TX. They make most of their motors
and drives in several factories in China, just like lots of other people.
Their QA documentation on the website
(http://www.tecowestinghouse.com/index.html) appears to be quite complete.
The old Westinghouse was the very first manufacturer of AC motors in the
world...but how good the new TECO/Westinghouse is, remains to be seen.

Walt Boyes
Editor in Chief
Control magazine
www.controlglobal.com
blog:Sound OFF!! http://www.controlglobal.com/soundoff
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Putman Media Inc.
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[email protected]

 

I would advise against Teco drives. We have had poor luck with them. In particular, their Profibus networking option was unreliable to the point we yanked it out and switched to running the drives over analog. We also believe that the drives do not have sufficient internal protection, which is what we attribute several drive failures to.

-James Ingraham
Sage Automation, Inc.

 

It appears to me that the Teco drives are relabeled Yaskawa drives. If that is the case, then they are top quality drives. The support may vary from Yaskawa, so you may want to ask some technical questions from your vendor and see if you get accurate and prompt answers.

 

From William Sturm: "It appears to me that the Teco drives are relabeled Yaskawa drives. If that is the case, then they are top quality drives."

The TECO/Westinghouse ("Teco" for short) are NOT relabeled Yaskawa drives. When Yaskawa released their 7 series (V7, F7, G7, etc.) they sold their old technology to Teco. So the Teco drives look and act a lot like the old 5 series Yaskawas (V5, F5, etc.)

In my opinion, Teco does manufacture their drive to the standards that Yaskawa does, even accounting for the "generation gap" of the old technology. I don't think that Teco manufactures to the standards of ANY "major" supplier.

Here is an un-attributed list of the top inverter drive manufactueres in the US in 2003. I would take any of these manufacturers over Teco.

Rockwell
Yaskawa
ABB
STI
Danfoss
GE/Fuji
Siemens
Eaton/CH
Mitsubishi
Baldor
AC Tech/Lenze
Emerson/CT

Globally: (also 2003)
Yaskawa
Mitsubishi
ABB
Fuji
Rockwell
Siemens
Emerson/CT

-James Ingraham
Sage Automation, Inc.