The box has start and run capacitors he says.
So if one leg is lagging because of added inductance like you say, one leg is leading because of the the start and run caps it might make sense.
Thats a really crude transformer.
I wonder if its also limiting inrush currentā¦
Sort of inductive reduced voltage starter?
I have never seen that done in the real world but its not unreasonable to think it would not work.
That āroot of 3 thingā comes into play here with only two operational legs but instead of 2/3 like you said I think its more like .58.
Thats a big reduction in starting amps and torque.
Probably good for a high inertia load like a blower.
Iām pretty stubborn in not wanting to use electronics to solve this if I can, its pretty easy to get a 208 motor, and I can wind a whole lot nicer looking transformer and re stack something if needed or rewind a motor if needed.
You are probably best to get that 5ton elevator ac to DC thing that you said you always wanted. I am not sure running transformer backwards works with all the phases now that I think about itā¦
Which leaves a rotary phase converter
Unless you run a dc motor with a wheel that rotates at 60hz, have a wheel or lobe (like a camshaft) that flips a mercury switch. A series of 3 would give you three phases of pulsed dc which you can obviously run a squirrel cage with because that is literally a VFD.
That wasnāt meā¦
But now that you mention it, I think I want one of those too, and a wind mill, and an overshot water wheel, and a servant named Friday to cut palm trees and build stuff from it and cook my mealā¦
Maybe I just stick with an elevator or stare lift for now because my knees do make the steps kind of hard now lol
I built a rotary 3-phase converter for a large lathe. I used capacitors to adjust the phase angles and start capacitors to get it spinning. No details (Itās been a few years ago) but it worked a treat and was a very fun project.
Oh man! I thought I had the perfect excuse for you to acquire those.
Anyway. here is some old skool tech since for your SHTF scenario.
The only OTHER diode I found was a wet cell type, but those donāt work as well and have issues. Althought I did stumble on to how to make a mosfet at home, but that was several steps and some serious chemicals.
Iām actually not surprised. āIf it aināt broke, donāt fix itā. that goes hand in hand with another old addage of āit is cheaper to waste energy, then to conserve itā. Some of the old technology actually works better in very specific use cases. I donāt think that is the case for rectifiers, but you have to account for the rest of the circuit as well, and in some cases if you change the design, it falls out of code so you have to fix a lot more then you intended to fix.
Not so long ago I could disconnect and remove heating elements in a forced air air electric furnace
Now they donāt want you to do that, and if you do you need a field inspection
What counts as built or bought gets gray and the clouds get very dark if you modify things like you say.
I think itās itās over reach on the side of inspectors and csa
Technically Iām not sure how much is allowed
Is a rewind allowed if you add modern insulation and then take advantage of this by making a motor stronger?
I donāt know
Better to just keep my head down and not get caught saying I fixed that but altered it with a new part
I guess I picked up some attitude from my boss back in the day when I worked in the motor repair shop
I learned a hydro inspection doesnāt know much except the code and when you corner him with math and physics he gets very nervous if he thinks heās going to lose face and seen as not know electricity as well as he knows codes
BaAck in the days before me when we switched from 25 to 60 cycle lots of washing machine motors had to be replaced.
But really they did not
You just had to split the winding and reconnect it it.
You turned a 1450 rpm 1/4 hp motor into a 3500 rpm motor that was now close to 1/2 hp
Do a pulley change and maybe he house wife was happy for less money than a new motor
I donāt t think you could do that with today without somebody telling you itās a code violation or something
By 1990 I was rewinding the last of the industrial motors for 60 hz ( going add to this at a later date maybe 95 we stopped generating our own a few years after hydro stopped days are hard to remember )
I donāt know if they would let me just restrike a new data plate and send that stuff back out like the old days
And of an inspector called me out on it but just might want to tell him to get stuffed
Iām not sure how I feel about effectively seeing much higher levels of enforcement.
On the one hand itās probably made electricity in Ontario safer
On the other it means Iām not special and I should follow them too
This is a common problem. People enforcing the codes arenāt experts. Neither are most people that make changes. You can convert the washer, and it might spin fine, but is it designed to handle the extra heat? and the rest of the components the extra torque? I am guessing in some cases yes, but I am also guessing in some cases no and the extra heat could cause a fire or stuff will break, and then people get mad and sue. In a number of cases rules are set, not because you canāt make it work, but so things arenāt crazy that you need an engineering degree figure out what was done when someone else comes back in 30 years.
what is the paygrade for the guy who is supposed to pull the lever? I would apply for the nightshift but that isnāt a recliner chair in the picture. I would need accommodations.
It is all good. i would be out of a job in 12 months anyway. I would literally program my way out of that one in 6 months, and they would catch me sleeping in 6 months, and then would be out of a jobā¦
Not a chance.
The ABB guys have the safety controller all locked up.
But you can access the Modicon.
Its all write protected though you cant do anything to it.
I knew the designer ( not well but I learned a lot from him )
Oh! that might take a bit longer. Challenge accepted! Where do I sign up?
I wonder how long it will take to reverse engineer the modicon. Then I can start with the abb stuff, and open source it all, and then get fired because of all the mt dew bottles stacked up that I didnāt have time to take to recycling.
Sean,
When you get to a certain age, you learn the meaning of āIf it aint broke, donāt fix itā. And the other: "The enemy of āGood Enoughā is āI Can Make it Betterā. I admire Mr. Wallace for being able to work on that menagerie of old, and older equipment. You also have to consider they donāt generally build quality anymore, just cheap.
Oh I can respect working on the variety of equipmentā¦ but it reminds me of the observation that everyone has this mission critical black box in their machine room they have no idea what it does or how it works anymore, they donāt have a spare and their entire organization collapses without it.
As far as better, I donāt know if that is true across the board. Simpler, easier to repair certainly. Some things are cheap, that were previously unaffordable. And some things
are better. And some stuff that everyone thought was great wasnt really all that cmpared to today. Some stuff was actually built better especially when you get into niche markets. It really just depends.
