Case Study

One of the leading providers of industrial training in Latin America has turned to variable frequency drive (VFD) technology from Invertek Drives to help educate and train electrical engineers of the future.

SENAI, the National Service for Industrial Learning, located in Santa Carina, Brazil, is the largest private professional education complex in Latin America, providing vocational, technical and higher education and training in technology.

Electrical engineering is a core area for the centre. To keep up with the latest technological advances, it needed to renew its line of didactic kits with inverters on its teaching benches for electrical and automation courses.

The centre appointed Atom Solucoes Industriais, an automation machinery manufacturer and sales partner of Invertek Drives, located in Chapeco, Brazil.

187 Optidrive E3 VFDs

The project involved the installation of 187 Optidrive E3 VFDs for the kits on 35 training units.

The benches needed VFDs mounted on boards, forming the didactic kits, where students can simulate the installation of the equipment “in a simpler, faster and safer way.”

Gabriel Agostini of Atom Solucoes, said: “SENAI is a highly respected education and training centre, working with a wide range of industrial and commercial businesses. They work to very high standards and expect the equipment they use for training students to be of the same high and exacting standards.

“They needed to complete the new training benches within 2022 and we were able to supply the required VFDs in the tight timescale. The assembled didactic kits consist of a 2.2kw, single-phase, 220V Optidrive E3. These were equipped with female terminals for banana pins directly on their power terminals. This makes its installation more didactic as the student learns where the cable must be connected to the equipment.

Supporting electrical engineers of the future

“The command terminals were taken to female terminals for banana pins, but directly on the board.”

All the kits were assembled and delivered in less than 30 days. And that’s not the end of the story.

Gabriel added: “At the beginning of this year we are also scheduling training for the centre’s teachers and lecturers at SENAI in order to prepare students and teachers to deal with more complex everyday solutions. It’s good to be working with such a well-respected establishment and for Optidrives to be a central part of training future electrical engineers.”