Inverter for a dusty/dirty environment

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dan_barber
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Inverter for a dusty/dirty environment

Post by dan_barber » Fri Feb 15, 2019 10:43 pm

Anyone care to state their preference in inverters? There are a couple of brands that I have not had good luck with especially in a dirty/dusty environment. I have dealt with multiple brands and not sure I have a favorite so looking to see what is used and why.
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Lopez Mike
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Re: Inverter for a dusty/dirty environment

Post by Lopez Mike » Fri Feb 15, 2019 11:46 pm

I've gone through several inverters in an under hood environment. Like you, I've had trouble with dirt and dust building up on the PC board. Poof!

The problems stopped when I found some open cell foam and covered the air intake of the unit. This one has a fan. You have to wash the foam out once in a while with soap and water so make it removable. Velcro.

As important was my giving up on cheap inverters. Any unit that does not have a sin wave output is poison. I went nuts trying to get things like a soldering pistol to work right. Just loud buzzing and no heat. Other units, ditto. As soon as I bought a sine wave unit, everything started to work. Also, the old units jammed my ham radio and car radio with noise.

Humidity problems, No advice. I suspect that you could open up the unit and spray both sides of the PC board with clear acrylic. This solution has been around since WW2.

I had one unit that wouldn't work in a larger boat that had ground fault interrupters. The neutral output line of the inverter was at a different potential than the ground. This was an expensive 6000 watt marine rated unit. A volt meter should show no voltage between the ground and neutral.
If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.
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dan_barber
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Re: Inverter for a dusty/dirty environment

Post by dan_barber » Mon Feb 25, 2019 2:58 pm

I settled on an AC Tech brand drive that is NEMA 4X rated. https://www.valinonline.com/products/esv222n02yxc I thought the price was reasonable for the specs. I'll update the thread once I install & start using the drive.
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