Quote Originally Posted by m_c View Post
I've not looked at my Huanyang VFD for a while, but the two WK boost inverters I've been playing with lately, the cooling fans only create airflow through the heatsink, so don't make any difference to how much dust/dirt/chips end up in the control electronics.

In terms of enclosures, as Voicecoil says, there are other considerations.
For dusty enviroments, I'd prefer to use a filtered fan blowing into and pressurising the enclosure to minimise the amount of dust being drawn in.

VFDs are generally designed to be placed in a clean enviroment/enclosure, so the location of the fan in terms of dust/dirt/chips isn't really a consideration. They're no different to your typical stepper/servo drives, in that regard.
Apart from the front panel controls, of course.

Okay, that’s a bit divisive and to be honest I don’t think we can hold any Chinese vendor as a paragon of design excellence. For what it’s worth my earlier post was after 15 minutes of casual browsing on cabinet design on the axia ventilation/cabinet website, I won’t claim any personal insight.

Still, ask a dozen engineers and you’ll get 20 different viewpoints.

I’ve alleged to the fact that I don’t practice what I preach, my old star mill has a 3mm welded bracket bolted onto the column to accept the vfd with the original exposed inlets/outlets covered in a stainless steel micro mesh... though a redesign has exposed more of these and I need to sort them out one day