Home Forums General Discussion Technical Questions siemens softstart

Had a few scr shorts over the last few months. Wondering if anyone else has had this problem

Yep. It's either that, or, the control board goes dark.

I've got a pile of em in the shop, waiting for me to get to replacing the scr's.

Also, the fault contactors often go. They are not the most reliable pieces of equipment. I have done a lovely write-up for an Otis LVM retrofit, if anyone wants it.

We have lost so many of these I was running out of room to store them. I finally had to dissect one to see what was causing the failure. Here's what happens: the C46 Capacitor on the control board shorts and causes the 20 Ohm R58 resistor to open. This is what causes the screen to go out. Siemens must have bought a bad batch of capacitors because thousands of these units have failed all over the country for the same reason. The good news is that if you return the starters to your vendor they can send them to Siemens and they will repair them for free. I have about 15 or 20 repaired starters on the shelf now that are warranty repaired. The down side is, it takes about 2 months to get the starters back from Siemens.

it was a bad solder on that cap on the board, siemens supplies us with the updated board only take 10 min to install. i have had SCR's that leak voltage but no current, that causes a motor wiring fault if its more than 5V

Wow, Admin, you have had much better luck with Siemens than I have. I sent a starter in for repair through Magtrol, and it took many, many months to get it back. It was about a year, iirc. Anyway, that's great info about the C46 cap, and R58 resistor! I've got a few of those boards I can fix, too, and now I won't have to find the specific component. Ah, troubleshooting by the numbers for lazy me, gotta love it! Heh heh!

Greenpants, I'm surprise at the level of support you get from Siemens. Must be the Otis "pull".

There was a Siemens engineer I used to deal with, he actually left Siemens, and got a job at Otis. (IDK where)

we do install these starters on every 211 and pretty much every y-del starter we replace even traction generator jobs. we have very few problems with them.