Are the more frequent trippings caused by a difference in actual current? Or, which is a very probable scenario, because the new breaker's trip setting is more accurate?
Your approach is ambitious - and impressive - and I think that you can be quite successful if you 'divide and conquer'. Dividing means that you look at all aspects of a DC motor's life and death. These are the more important ones, with the deadliest first:
1. Commutator flashover. The Germans call it 'Rundfeuer', literally 'Fire Around' and it will destroy the commutator in a split second. Flashover is more critical at high speeds and if you are running with field reduction. A flashover can also destroy the armature winding if severe enough. Remember that your Ward-Leonard genset also has a commutator that is at risk at high current levels and needs to be checked for limits.
2. High currents at very low speed or stillstand will heat the commutator locally so that it swells and develops runout, which, when you increse speed, will cause arcing and that is also bad for the commutator and brushes.
3. Mechanical damage to shaft, couplings, keys etcetera is usually caused by very high currents. Quite a bit higher than currents causing flashover. At low speeds, however, you can have such problems without flashover on the commutator.
4 Thermal problems in excitation and armature winding. The excitation winding is usually never a problem and easily covered with a simple temperature sensor or Klixon. The armature winding is trickier but a couple of IR sensors can be used to check temperature and trip the breaker (or reduce output from motor) when temperature gets high.
5. Overspeed, vibration, lack of excitation, dirt, water, debris and tools and other well-known DC motor killers are probably not your first concern. But should also be considered when there are DC motor problems.
Brush position and correct connection of compensation and interpole windings are other things to consider.
In view of this, I think that 'Frequent Max Current' is the current that the motor is designed for when reversing the mill and that E Max current is the maximum allowed current 'all categories' where 'E' may stand for Emergency or Extreme, hard to say which. Rated current is, of course, the maximum continuous current and also the RMS of the current taken over a certain time span, usually over an hour for larger machines with air cooling.
Do you have any recordings showing the current profile and what current you actually have when the breaker trips? That would be very helpful in determining what is happening in your drive.
Gunnar Englund
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100 % recycled posting: Electrons, ideas, finger-tips have been used over and over again...