From 5-7 June at the Indaba Hotel and Conference Centre, Rockwell Automation introduced its latest AC variable speed drive product offering, the Allen-Bradley PowerFlex 750-Series, to the African market. The global industrial automation specialist showcased its cost effective, user friendly and energy efficient new range to representatives from the OEM sector and industry, as well as consulting engineers, authorised channel providers, panel manufacturers and existing and potential end-user customers.
Rockwell Automation marketing manager Jeff Sandison (l) with global product manager for low voltage drives, John Cherney, at the official launch.
This family of drives maximises investment and improves productivity and the wide range of voltage and power classes makes it suitable for many industrial applications. The Allen-Bradley PowerFlex 750-Series includes more selection options for control, communications, safety and supporting hardware than currently offered by other drives in its class.
“With the flagship PowerFlex 750-Series, we are now able to offer our customers an even more complete drive solution, ranging from 0,75 to 1500 kW. The drives allow us to cover voltage requirements from 380 to 690 V across a broad array of applications. The modularity, safety features and robustness make it class-leading and represents the pinnacle of the latest AC drive technology,” says Rockwell Automation product business manager, Adrian van Wyk.
Training stations on the large show-floor allowed delegates to get hands-on experience of the new drives’ functionality and allowed basic configuration and set-up. Delegates were particularly impressed by the new roll-out design of the floor mount drives, which allows for a smaller footprint on average. Another standout was the advanced cooling technology which contributes to robust operation in harsh environments. “This has been achieved even though the drives are more compact. The entire range of drives is conformal coated as a standard for increased protection against external environmental factors impacting on reliability and performance,” explains Van Wyk.
Even prior to the launch, Rockwell Automation experienced good take-up in the market of this new product line. The company has bolstered its stock and spare part holding with an investment of several million USD in preparation of the anticipated post-launch response. “Our customer service and maintenance group and authorised channel providers have also been trained in start-up, commissioning, troubleshooting and assisting customers with installation,” says Van Wyk.
Rockwell Automation will continue to support its current drive ranges and will run and manage them in parallel with the new drive offering in accordance with its lifecycle management service. It will be rolling out the PowerFlex 750-Series across southern and sub-Saharan Africa during the course of the year, and will add this new product line as part of its commercial programme roll-out launched late last year.
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