Waupaca Elevator implements Mitsubishi Electric’s PLCs for better troubleshooting

Mitsubishi Electric has announced its newest “customer success story,” focused on Waupaca Elevator company, which manufactures residential elevators and dumbwaiters for applications across North America.

Waupaca Elevator sells through independent dealers, who need consistent reliability and  intuitive ways to service and maintain the elevators.

Waupaca Elevator implemented Mitsubishi Electric’s latest iQ-F compact programmable logic controllers (PLCs). The systems’ built-in data logging and diagnostic capabilities enable dealer service technicians to track the usage history of each elevator and monitor service fault codes. Technicians get deep visibility into the elevator system to easily troubleshoot issues.

This visibility results in faster installations, since technicians can quickly pinpoint where trouble is occurring, as well as faster and more accurate diagnoses of specific issues. It allows for preventive maintenance, which addresses issues before they escalate.

“The other nice thing is that, now, if a drive gets damaged in the field, we can just send them a drive right off the shelf. We don’t have to program it. The technician can just drop it in and the unit is up and running. The PLC does the programming automatically.” said Gary Ziebell, Vice-President and General Manager, Waupaca Elevator.

Another way the manufacturer helped dealers is by implementing Mitsubishi Electric variable frequency drives (VFDs) to mitigate the effects of voltage fluctuations on elevator braking resistors. VFDs allow braking resistors to turn off automatically as needed, thereby eliminating the effects of voltage fluctuations such as overheating and reduced resistor life.