Fast retrofit for maximum elevator uptime

The senior residents in an apartment block in Saltcoats, Scotland were confined to their homes until Northern Industrial found a rapid fix for their faulty elevator. Luckily Danfoss VLT® Lift Drive LD 302 ensures that fast retrofit of an elevator drive is possible with an off-the-shelf solution.

Acute fix needed
The comfortable lives of senior residents in a block of apartments in Saltcoats, Scotland, were recently perturbed by a malfunctioning elevator. Northern Industrial, a leading Danfoss Drives elevator specialist, was called in to fix the problem, which was particularly acute as many of the residents found it difficult or even impossible to leave the building without using the elevator.

Service repair a costly affair
When the engineers from Northern Industrial arrived at the Saltcoats apartments, they found the problem was that the drive for the elevator motor had failed and that it was a type that had long been obsolete. With no like-for-like replacement available anywhere in the market and no spare parts to effect a repair, returning the elevator to service could have been a long and costly affair.

In the past, the only way to fix a problem of this type would have been to replace the obsolete drive with a standard variable speed drive, which would then need to be customized with option modules to run elevator applications. As standard drives aren’t dedicated for elevator applications, they are complicated to install. It requires a lot of time and effort to transfer parameters and programs due to the closed architecture typically used in elevator control systems.

VLT® Lift Drive LD 302
To address this common problem with ageing elevator installations, Danfoss has introduced its VLT® Lift Drive. This drive has been designed from the outset to be easy to install and set up in elevator applications, and to be compatible with almost any type of elevator control system. And it’s available off the shelf, which makes it possible to keep lift downtime to an absolute minimum.

An ideal choice for retrofit
The Danfoss drive boasts open architecture with the simple menu structure written in plain, easy-to-understand language. These factors made it an ideal choice for the engineers from Northern Industrial to install as a replacement for the old drive that had failed in the Saltcoats apartments.

Fitting the Danfoss VLT® Lift Drive proved to be as straightforward as expected and, after it had been installed, it was found to provide a much smoother ride than the old drive it replaced. It was also much quieter in operation – which is always a bonus in residential locations – as it has a specially controlled cooling fan that runs only when needed.

Saves time and money
Upon completing the retrofit, Ben Fordham, the engineer from Northern Industrial who installed the drive, explained: “Fitting the new Danfoss drive was an easy and fast task, as the drive set-up system and documentation use industry-standard elevator terminology. In addition, the drive’s dedicated elevator design made it easier to configure which meant that we didn’t have to replace the whole controller, and that saved us a lot of time and money.”

No time for downtime
Elevators provide an essential service in residential, medical, commercial, business and manufacturing buildings, so when they break down, there are enormous pressures on engineers to fix them as soon as possible. Using designed-for-the-job elevator drives from Danfoss offers a simple solution to this sometimes difficult and costly problem. The off-the-shelf Danfoss VLT® Lift Drive requires minimal customization and can save thousands of pounds in repair costs – not to mention offering quick and easy installation that guarantees the elevator will be up and running in the shortest time possible!