ballen
Diamond
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2011
- Location
- Garbsen, Germany
Slightly off topic, but I need to vent and this seems like the best place.
My 1986 J&S 540 surface grinder has a small 3-phase coolant pump. The impeller section has pretty much rotted to bits, and a couple of years ago when it failed in the middle of a part, I patched it up with some epoxy and ordered a spare. The spare was sitting in it's box until a week ago, when the motor protector for the coolant pump started to pop. So I finally threw out the old pump, and replaced it with the spare.
The old pump had a Klöckner-Moeller motor overload protector rated 0.16-0.24A. The new coolant pump nameplate said 0.28A. So I thought it would be good to replace the overload protector with the next larger size, 0.24-0.40A. I found a NOS one on Ebay for 7 Euros, and last night put it in. You'd think it would take five minutes, there are only seven connections on screw-in terminals.
The protector mates from below to a relay and auxiliary switch. Here's what a spare one looks like from the side:
Instead of five minutes, it was an uncomfortable 90-minute nightmare. You can't remove the device from the DIN rail, because the removal clip is blocked by the protector on the bottom. But you also can't remove the protector from the assembly without unwiring a lot of the device, because access is blocked by all of the wiring.
Is there anyone out there who thinks this sort of construction is a good idea? It's very hard to maintain/replace. I can't imagine a sensible engineer coming up with this. Perhaps the people in marketing - since with the space and wiring constraints it's impossible to swap this for other parts, unless you are prepared to rewire the entire control cabinet.
My 1986 J&S 540 surface grinder has a small 3-phase coolant pump. The impeller section has pretty much rotted to bits, and a couple of years ago when it failed in the middle of a part, I patched it up with some epoxy and ordered a spare. The spare was sitting in it's box until a week ago, when the motor protector for the coolant pump started to pop. So I finally threw out the old pump, and replaced it with the spare.
The old pump had a Klöckner-Moeller motor overload protector rated 0.16-0.24A. The new coolant pump nameplate said 0.28A. So I thought it would be good to replace the overload protector with the next larger size, 0.24-0.40A. I found a NOS one on Ebay for 7 Euros, and last night put it in. You'd think it would take five minutes, there are only seven connections on screw-in terminals.
The protector mates from below to a relay and auxiliary switch. Here's what a spare one looks like from the side:
Instead of five minutes, it was an uncomfortable 90-minute nightmare. You can't remove the device from the DIN rail, because the removal clip is blocked by the protector on the bottom. But you also can't remove the protector from the assembly without unwiring a lot of the device, because access is blocked by all of the wiring.
Is there anyone out there who thinks this sort of construction is a good idea? It's very hard to maintain/replace. I can't imagine a sensible engineer coming up with this. Perhaps the people in marketing - since with the space and wiring constraints it's impossible to swap this for other parts, unless you are prepared to rewire the entire control cabinet.