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What can i build with these parts?

carwash

Plastic
Joined
May 20, 2008
Location
Union, KY
Ok, so the guy i got my lathe from gave me all of his previous RPC parts. He upgraded to a full 3 phase panel with a 40 hp RPC, etc. because he moved to powering about 6 or 8 machines.

The setup he gave me, he used to run 3 machines off of. Hard to believe actually, after learning what i have here about RPC's. Here are the parts he gave me...

US Motors 10 hp. He says it works perfect.

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Small panel box with 3 breakers in it. Two 40 amp breakers and one 30 amp. the seem to switch good enuf. Inside is also some sort of momentary switch, with a toggle on the outside. I believe this switch opens up some sort of black hole or star gate to another dimension.

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And then there is this box... that is full of these things. I'm sure that this is some sort of time machine contraption, or a flux capacitor for a delorean or something.

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Ok, so is this all the parts i need to set up this phase converter? What else is necessary? If this worked for him, will it work for me? What are these silver cans in this box?

And how do i power all of this up? Thanks in advance for any help.
 
Well, you've got the expensive parts!

You've got breakers, a motor, and caps. I'd look in the stickies (the threads at the top of this forum labeled "sticky"), and see what kind of design you'd like to build. Looking at those designs, you should be able to figure out what the parts you've got were used for, and get an idea of what to do with them, and how to wire this beast. You may or may not want to use the parts the same way as the guy who built it. You may want to add stuff, improve the design, put meters on it, tinker with balancing. Until you read over the basic designs and get some ideas in your head, it's hard to answer such a general question. Obviously you CAN build a phase converter from that, but depending on what you want in an RPC, you may want to change the design.

I've seen RPCs that range from a 3 phase motor, and a single phase motor to spin it up using a simple high current disconnect switch to turn it on and off, and a toggle on the single phase motor. Then I've seen them with a start/stop button, balancing caps, meters, lights, relays, breakers/fuses, all of which serve their intended purpose. :cheers:
 
Junkyard J calls them "caps", the full name of the silver tube device is "capacitor".

You want to be careful around capacitors, they store energy, and can suddenly release it at very high amperage. Generally, the bigger the capacitor, the more dangerous it is. Before you handle one, you should use a hefty chunk of metal to short across both terminals -- unplugged from the power source, of course!
 
Well, they are 4 very large capacitors i guess. Is this what is used to help with the initial startup of the machine?

What i'm wanting to build is the simplest RPC possible that will do the job. Don't need meters, or any of that fanciness... YET. Just want to get this lathe working. So, how would these parts i have be wired... tab A into slot B, etc?
 
Simple would be a starting circuit, and a distribution box.

I think the momentary toggle hooked to that relay thing with the red wires comming off of it. The relay was used to put the cap(s) (not sure if all those are for starting) in circuit to start the motor. Then once the motor is started you can fire up the machines connected to it. I think the breaker pannel was used for power distribution to the connected machines. The problem with that is it's a single phase pannel. As long as the idler motor has power, all the connected machines are live. It's really not safe, you should upgrade to a 3 phase pannel, or have fused/circuit breaker disconnects for each machine. Maybe the single phase breaker box was only on the input side, and the machines all had their own disconnect. I've never actually built an RPC, just seen a few other people built and used. There's not much to them, all you really need is an input breaker, starting circuit, and a fused/breaker disconnect for each machine. Balancing caps are optional. If you have a small single phase motor around, you can use that to spin the idler motor. I dunno if you leave the "pony" motor powered or not. Like I said, check out the designs sticky here, and see what looks easiest to build. :cheers:
 
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Hmmmm.........I know, a mysterious white smoke generator
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oh yeah!
 
The caps you have shown are "run" caps, I do not see any "start" caps, although I DO see the relay that is used to turn them off once the motor is up to speed. Start caps are usually a much larger MFD for their physical size, BUT they can only be run for a brief time. My dad used to build static and rotary phase converters for sale, people would fiddle with them and get the "start" caps wired up all the time and they explode quite violently if you do so....blowing tinfoil all over the place :-)


Bill
 
nope, not running yet, i really need to find someone to just come over and tell me what i need to get, and wire it all up for me... im an electric tard, but i sure would love to learn to use this machine...
 








 
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