Mystery Rotary Converter. Need some help.

I found this rotary converter for 50 bucks. What do I need to do to find out what it can run? How can I get it tested? Thanks.

Look for a hp rating on the motor that will tell you something about the max horsepower it can supply. That looks like it got flooded to me.
Bill .

MONARCH16CW said:

How can I get it tested? Thanks.

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Don't try. Presume it is trash. Or quote me. Shed the box and replace, ELSE gut it and start over.

If the idler motor is ALSO bad (it may not be...), go and find another one to go with your new/rebuilt control box.

If for the 16CW, needs to be a min of 10 HP since the CW will have 7 1/2

Box looks like pure trash - why fiddle with any number of headaches?

Do some careful MEASURING on motor - then look in Machinery's Handbook in the electric motor frame size section - might learn something about it

Where's all the fun ?

Hook it up to power and light it up.

It's only 220 vac.....

It's either gonna work or trip the breaker.

That looks like it came off the Edmund Fitzgerald. Not rusty enough for a salt water bath.

The parts in the box look nasty, assume they are bad for the moment. The motor may be OK, so long as it spins easily by hand. If in doubt about it being dry, run about 1/4 of full load current through the motor, using DC. Make sure it gets warm, but not hot. leave it that way for a couple hours. That's just because we have no idea if, or how long ago, it got wet.

Next, hook one terminal of the windings to 120V through a low wattach 120V old-time light bulb, and the other side to the CASE of the motor, Be very damn careful, because the motor case will be "hot" with 120. Motor must be sitting on something like dry wood. If the light does not light at all, it passes test #1.

Next, take apart that dangerous setup, and use your DMM to check ohms from windings to case (should be high, like a megohm or more), and to check windings for continuity and about the same resistance for all. If it spins by hand easily, and passes those tests, you have a good shot of it being good.

digger doug said:

Where's all the fun ?

Hook it up to power and light it up.

It's only 220 vac.....

It's either gonna work or trip the breaker.

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Or ....do a slow-cook and burn sumthin'. Or ..do a FAST reaction and burst a capacitor. Or shock the hopeful soul trying to believe his fifty-dollah good luck, or..

Ignorance is bliss? Temporarily.

OT, but Mum, 1951 - struggling to raise three kids and furnish the new quarters on even an Officer's pay of the day - is sooo pleased to have found a goodly length of wire wound around some sort of cylindrical bobbin.

She spends part of the day stretching wire across window frames to hang makeshift curtains, hammering in small nails with the butt of a Case kitchen knife, wire-wound "gadget" in the hand holding the nail..

Dad... comes home, pleased at her ingenuity, sez: "Where did you find the wire?"

She proudly shows him the "gadget".

He... goes bloodless for a moment.

Gingerly takes it from her, descends to the stout stone basement, places it on the concrete floor, piles about a foot of old newspapers atop it.. runs the remains of that so very, very handy wire to a light-socket.

Pulls Mum around the corner, flips the switch.

At which point the MIL-Spec // #8 electric blasting cap she had been hammering next to does its reg'lar "Day Job".... and fills the basement with confetti.

"That could have been your hand and eyes.", he sez...

Capacitors can do that without even the need of hanging curtains or saving up old newspapers..

What you got there is the price of a motor, the box and internals were just a giveaway (or just a throwaway from the first party). Don't worry because a few capacitors won't cost much. I would detach the box and search for the motor nameplate.

I don't like the idea of sawing off the motor shaft. But if it has to be done why make it look unclean. You might consider getting the end of the shaft nice, square, and sanitary.

I think you have a 10 or 15Hp there.

That is not rust its sawdust people.

Yes the box is filled with sawdust. I will see about getting the box off tomorrow.

For those who wrote about the "motor" and sawing off the shaft, I will point out that there is no shaft. The device looks a great deal like my old Snyder rotary converter, which also has a motor-like component with no shaft. Such things were factory made that way. If you want to see if it rotates, remove the fan cover and gently (might be old brittle plastic fan) try to rotate the fan.

My Snyder lives in a dark corner, so I have not looked at it for a decade or two, but I think the nameplate was on the box cover, and there is no plate on the "motor."

I think Snyder is no longer in business. Here are pictures of an old one: http://www.genemco.com/catalog/pdf/SAPM120snyderrotaryconverter.pdf

Larry

johansen said:

That is not rust its sawdust people.

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If you say so. What is laying on the wires may be sawdust, but what is in patches on the side of the box sure looks like rust in the pics.

Blow it out with compressed air to get rid of the sawdust and post new pics of the insides. I think it's going to be fine.I would make a cover for that box before firing it up and running it. If a cap does blow, it'd be good to have it contained, but I don't think anything is going to blow.

That box is wiped out. I would discard it and find some way to test the motor separately, Assuming the motor is good. $50 is an excellent price.

Pre-buiit RPC control boxes with starters and capacitors are available on eBay at reasonable prices.

If that is a Snyder... hmm. The white sticker says "Rotary Phase Converter". It appears that back in the day they must have been proud of their products and didn't see the need to put their name on the sticker. It appears to built by somebody who cares about serial numbers, but I don't see the number.

Every motor like that would have a shaft unless it was custom built, for that one I doubt it. So the shaft was cut off by someone. It sure does not look clean to me. In regards to the wiring, hard to believe that a Synder wiring job would ship like that. The box is also a cheap box from a home improvement store. Not in business any more... makes one wonder.

Take apart the whole thing and start from scratch. Should be easy because everything is held together with electrical tape.

1. Remove wires one at a time and make a drawing as you go.
2. Remove capacitors from box. Clean and test.
3. Remove box. Clean and make a new front cover. Paint.
4. Part motor and inspect bearings. If there are no seals or there are metal ones with holes you can flush them out and lube. If seals are rubber you probably don't have to do anything. I would install brand new bearings. $20-$30 for each bearing is good investment for you will never have to deal with the motor again. Paint.

The whole process would be called restoration. I did leave out step 0.

0. See if it just works, and if it does proceed to step 1. The risk here is that you might damage a component or the motor. If it smokes then you will never know if you could have prevented it.

Monarchist said:

Capacitors can do that without even the need of hanging curtains or saving up old newspapers..

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Bill, stand away from the open end of the box, the breaker panel is probably 20 feet away at least.

Use caution.

If it blows, it's not a stick of dynamite, trust me.

Instead of taking all this time to identify every damn wire and part, and unhooking
to test.

PLUG THE DAMN THING IN.

If any component in this system is broken, it's already broken, see ?

Spending several hours to check each and every component, and then what ?

You then plug it in, and it still goes Poof.

Eh, it takes little time to give it a good lookover for stuff that will cause a problem. Loose wires, bare wires touching things, stuff laying over contacts or connections, etc.

Saves a good deal of parts that were just fine until some random piece of crud shorted the wrong voltage to them.

The thing does not have more than about 15 minutes worth of wires and parts in it, just sketch out the connections and see if it makes sense vs a real RPC diagram as in the sticky up top. See if you can identify the parts that ought to be there.

You have no idea what happened to the thing before you got there. Some know nothing may have looked in and messed up connections, etc. Maybe the boss's son or nephew. Worth your time to make sure there is nothing really silly about it.

If it passes the basic sanity check, THEN plug it in and see if it goes. I'd hang a clamp-on meter on it to observe useful bits of data like verifying that the start cap drops out when it speeds up, and so forth.

DD is correct about one thing. Eventually you are going to HAVE TO plug it in. If after a bit of due diligence, you can't find any reason not to plug it in, then it's probably time to do that.