With all the variable frequency motor drives in a modern food or beverage plant, knowing the level and quality of voltages and currents they’re sending to a motor could help a maintenance tech save the life of a motor. No one wants to keep replacing the same 20-hp motor again and again because excessive harmonics or voltage pulses killed it. Who can afford the downtime?
An engineer could drag an oscilloscope and a DVM to the motor drive(s), or now could leave them behind and use Fluke Corporation’s MDA-510 or MDA-550 Motor Drive Analyzer instead, which was released in October. The MDA-500 Series adds new, application-specific intelligence via instrument software to Fluke’s well-known workhorse, the ScopeMeter Test Tool.