The global site of the UK's leading magazine for automation, motion engineering and power transmission
19 March, 2024

LinkedIn
Twitter
Twitter link

Control Techniques extends drives warranties to 5 years

23 September, 2019

The drives-maker Control Techniques has announced a free five-year warranty on its Commander range of general-purpose drives. Anyone who buys one of these drives will be able to register to extend its warranty from two years to five, at no extra cost. The offer relates to the C200 and C300 general-purpose drives that CT launched last year when it reintroduced the Commander name.

Control Techniques says that the move is testimony to the products’ reliability and durability. “To increase the warranty period for our Commander range signals our confidence in the product and gives drive users added security,” says Control Techniques’ president, Tony Pickering. “We are particularly proud to be in a position where we can offer this.”

He adds that the move will allow CT to differentiate its products in what has become a commodity market with tight margins: “It gives the customers extra value.”

The move has other benefits for Control Techniques too. “We’re attracting new distributors off the back of this,” Pickering reports. He adds that the requirement for customers to register for the extended warranty will give Control Techniques more information on who is using its drives, and where.

For warranty claims on VSDs up to 7.5kW, the drives will probably be replaced. Larger models will be repaired.

Control Techniques previously offered five-year warranties in the early 2000s. This generated a lot of growth, Pickering reports, “but at a cost”. The five-year warranties were dropped during Emerson’s ownership of Control Techniques.

Pickering: giving customers extra value

Depending on how the well the five-year warranty scheme works for the Commander range, Control Techniques may extend it to other items in its portfolio. But Pickering points out that when problems are reported for more complex drives such its Unidrive range, “the high probability is that it is due to ‘finger trouble’ ”.

Pickering doesn’t know how much the five-year warranty will cost the company: “It’s an investment.”

Control Techniques reintroduced the Commander name at the end of 2018, with the new C200 and C300 drives replacing the earlier Unidrive M200 and M300 models. The VSDs, which have been designed for ease of set-up and installation, span ratings from 0.25–132kW and are claimed to have the smallest footprint in their class. On-board PLCs remove the need for external controllers. For more complex applications, the drives are compatible with Control Techniques’ plug-in option modules.




Magazine
  • To view a digital copy of the latest issue of Drives & Controls, click here.

    To visit the digital library of past issues, click here

    To subscribe to the magazine, click here

     

Poll

"Do you think that robots create or destroy jobs?"

Newsletter
Newsletter

Events

Most Read Articles