Our Basic Actuators carry a 12-month warranty as standard. Our Smart actuators come with a 2-year warranty as standard. Additional warranty can be agreed with our team based on your application. Speak to our sales team today.  

Yes, all our actuators are IP67 and are suitable for external use. All the actuators are tested for IP67 via full submersion in water to ensure the actuators are sealed. There is no need to remove the cover at any time with the 10-50Nm actuators being pre wired, the 80-400Nm actuators have an external wiring box for ease of wiring. 

No, the actuators should not be exposed to any jetting or be pressure washed. The IP67 rating does not cover this. In the same way the actuator should not be exposed to deluge of water and for good practice, if installed externally in a location where there is high UV exposure, consider a protective cover for the actuator. Actuators are -20C to +60C rated.  

Yes, we can install special low temperature grease and use an enhanced heater system to ensure that the actuator continues to operate below the recommended minimum temperature. Note that this is a made to order factory special, speak to your sales representative today.  

Our actuators use Internal Super Capacitors to achieve the failsafe function. The super capacitor is charged whilst powered and ensure that the actuator can close or open, on losing power. 

If the actuator is cold, out of the box, the initial charge time is around 30-60 seconds. Once initial charge is complete, the actuator can be used. Smart actuators will actually display the charge % and you can define in the firmware what the minimum % charge should be before the actuator can be used. 

On the basis your valve conforms to ISO 5211, in theory yes. The actuator is fully compliant to the standards for ISO 5211 and offers dual drilling and double square drives. Check your valve stem and ISO pad mounting details to check the actuator will ‘direct mount’ to the valve. If you require any stem adapters or brackets to enable the actuator to mount to the valve, our team can assist with this also.  

Of course, we ship actuators each day all over the world with customers in the USA, Canada, Australia, South Africa and many more countries. We can offer Ex Works shipping from our UK and Spanish location’s or we can offer DHL, Fedex, TNT or UPS shipping, should you have any preference for your local market. Simply speak to your sales representative and request a quote for shipping. Note that unless specifically agreed, we do not cover the local VAT/Tax and Duty to clear goods. 

Yes, we supply Country of Origin and Chamber signed and stamped invoices for export. Ask our sales team for more information. 

Yes, we work with many valve manufacturers and leading UK valve actuation distributors.  We are able to size, assemble and dry bench function test at our UK test facility. We can then ship back to you or direct to site, for example with your own delivery note or plain label.

Yes, the Smart Modulating actuators offer 4-20mA or 0-10V feedback depending on your input signal. However, it is important to note that our Modulating actuators do not offer end of travel position confirmation. The actuator will give feedback in the open or close position ie 4ma would be closed and 20ma is open along with the actuators LED light being lit at this point.

All our actuators have LED status lights with Green being Open, Red being closed and Blue being Alert as standard. If you have a Blue LED on your actuator, it means your actuator has a fault/alert. This will mainly be caused by over torque/valve jam. To check this simply remove the actuator from the valve and operate the actuator as normal. If the actuator operates as it should, the issue is valve related. If the problem persists, the other likely problem is that the motor has failed. If the motor has failed, this cannot be repaired on site and you should contact your sales representative.  

This means that your actuator is now in an ALERT state and you should also see a Blue LED light lit on the actuator. This means that you need to check for valve over torque or if the motor has failed. If the motor has failed, this cannot be repaired on site and you should contact your sales representative. 

This might sound like a typical manufacturers reply, but 90% of our queries relating to non working product are found to be wiring related. So, the good news, if your actuator isn’t working, its probably something simple. We would always suggest that you double checking your wiring, your PLC and confirm what signals and voltage is being sent to the actuator. Most of the actuators are very simple in their wiring and how they work. Most actuators require a neutral on Blue cable/terminal and a switchable live between the Red and Black terminal. Ensure that you don’t have power to both Red and Black at the same time. 

Most likely you just need to let the capacitor charge for a short moment. Allow the actuator around 30-60 seconds under power, for the capacitor to charge to a satisfactory level that will allow the actuator to open / close under power.

Yes, you can technically use the product as a 2 wire configuration. This means you can power open via 24V or 95-265V voltage input, and remove the power to close via capacitor. You should however allow some rest time between operations. 

The failsafe actuators have an increased power consumption compared to the standard on off actuators, when the actuators is fully charged, a single close via the capacitor will use around 20% of the charge. As long as there is power to the actuator, the capacitor is always charging. 

No, currently we cannot offer this. It is our most requested feature that we don’t currently have, but are actively working on making it available. The capacitor cannot be charged quick enough and with the increase power requirements to run the motor at high speed, we cannot guarantee the capacitor has enough power or charge to close. We can offer failsafe actuators, or hi speed actuators, but not failsafe high speed.  

The fastest operation we can offer is 1 second when using 24VDC supply on our 10Nm and 20Nm actuators. We can offer 5-6 seconds when using a 24VAC signal or 95-265VAC signal. For our 50-110Nm actuators, we can offer 5-6 seconds on either 24VAC/DC or 95-265VAC. We cannot offer our 200-400Nm in high speed currently, however the run time is as standard considered fast, at 25 seconds.  

The standard length of cable for our 10-50Nm actuators is 0.8m. We can supply this upto 20m long, however you will need to obtain pricing from your sales representative on this and check availability. We stock cable in the UK to perform a cable change as required. Note that the 80-400Nm actuators come with a 2 x conduit entry ‘Wiring Box’. This is supplied as standard without cable but can be supplied with cable, on request, at additional cost.  

Yes, we offer credit terms of UK and Spanish customers and with special approval can offer terms to customers outside the UK and Spain. Your sales representative can process this request and send you a link to complete the required application forms.   

Our Returns Policy can be found online but as a summary, we will try and resolve over the phone / email, to remove the downtime and need to return goods to us. If this cannot be avoided, we will ask that the goods are returned to us, we will send forms to complete for when we get the goods back here. We would usually ask that a new purchase order is placed for the replacement goods. The reported faulty goods are returned to us for inspection. If found to be a manufacturing defect, the original goods are credited and the replacement goods are payable. If the goods are deemed faulty/damaged are customer generated, the replacement and original goods are payable.  

Yes, we have an appointed distributor in South Africa and you can find their contact details in the Distributors section above. Wherever we have an official distributor or have a trusted customer that can perhaps better support you locally, we will direct you to a partner of AVA. Where we don’t have appointed partners and distributors, we can handle your enquiry/requirement directly. 

The actuators are sold as being maintenance free, there are no parts that the customer/ end user should be changing themselves or need to. We can offer spare covers for examples for those odd occasions where the plastic housing is damaged on site or in transit. Speak to your sales representative about that.

This is difficult to answer. Typically the EU directives call for 12,000 operations with a 75% duty cycle considered. We have tested our actuators past 1 million operations and many times we have tested over 100,000 cycles as part of our life cycle testing. This will always very based on your application, based on vibration, frequency of operation, rest time, temperature etc. We typically would rate for warranty purposes that the Basic series actuators will be rated to 24,000 cycles and the Smart series will be rated to 60,000 cycles. A cycle is considered a single movement, either open or closed quarter turn movement.  

Duty Cycle is the rest time of the motor between operations? So, most actuators are 75% rated which means if the cycle time to open or close is 10 seconds (per quarter turn) then the rest time should be 2.5 seconds before you operate the actuator again.