Whole Shop And Machine-specific Help For Dunce

I have another problem, which is back when I installed the load center, and etc, I basically went with the cheapest thing I could get away with. 100amp meter base, 100amp safety switch, and 100amp load center.
Thoughts?

Thanks!
I have a farm much like yours. I run the whole place (including an indoor arena) through a 100A main breaker with no problems. 100A equipment will handle the starting transients of your motors without difficulty.
 
Did they hang a pig on the barn pole just for it? If so they may need to resize it for heavier service. I think I would simply get a 200 amp meter socket/base, a fused disconnect (outdoor, the fire dept will thank you for that, seriously),
Most utilites no longer install anything less than a 200A service. The firemen often just pull the meter even when there is a switch right next to it (it should be there anyway, though).
 
Did they hang a pig on the barn pole just for it? If so they may need to resize it for heavier service. I think I would simply get a 200 amp meter socket/base, a fused disconnect (outdoor, the fire dept will thank you for that, seriously), and a load center capable of handling whatever heavy single phase circuits you want to add new, including the entire 3 phase panel. You can then dedicate a larger breaker to the single phase sub panel that is already there and presumably wired into some circuits in the barn. That way not much of the old work will need to be disturbed.

When you run the single phase power to the rotary converter, you then can build a dedicated 3 phase load center that handles only the machinery that runs on 3 phase. Start the converter, and all your machines will be ready to go. And don't ever figure on all of then either starting or running at the same time. Unless you hire a crew and crack a whip. If it's just you and your personal shop, the dollar math can't justify the cost to figure 100% current draw. No one does that even in the commercial world that I know of.

I'm sure some of our resident real electricians will find an error in my methods, and that's fine. That's why we are crowdsourcing this information. It won't hurt my feelings any. I know electric work enough to do it, I feel safely, but perhaps not in total compliance with code in every instance. I don't make nor have I every made my living doing it. Just been around it, and done it quite a bit.
Tony, I always install a disconnect at the pole. There's one now, but it's 100amp.

As far as a 3-phase sub panel, that was my thinking. I'd like to distribute 3-phase to 5 locations, maybe 6. Lathe, milling machine, air compressor, two others inside the workshop, and one in the central aisle way outside the workshop.

As far as planning for 100%, I agree with both you and Jim that would be silly. Would be a lot of waste in that.

As for being an electrician, I'm not one obviously, but over the years, I've managed with some instruction and research, to get done 99.9% of what we've needed done.

I confess that part of my worries that drive me towards thinking about max loads is born of the paranoia my paying job foments in my thinking. When I began work there a decade ago, they'd put in electrical capacity that was insufficient. With the growth of reliance on technology, they had a real problem already. They were running into capacity-related problems when I started there. I issued warnings to the uppers until one day, in a bad situation, we tripped one of the panels and about a dozen workstations, a couple dozen servers, and various other equipment suddenly went dead. There was some data loss. It was a mess. THEN and only then did they listen. Since then, they've listened more. So we've had a couple of upgrades since. Point is, I admit that the situation I encountered there biases my thinking quite a bit.

So you and Jim are absolutely right. Still, there's always that little voice hollering at me: "Hey, remember when..." While what we do at work is infinitely more important than what will ever go on in my barn's workshop, the place tends to make a 24x7 worry-wart out of me, and it bleeds over to personal endeavors some. That's all.

Everything you and Jim have said on the matter is perfectly reasonable.

Now, back to something you said, any suggestions on a reasonably priced 3-phase sub panel, for distributing the output of the phase converter? Whatever else I do, that seems the smart way to go.

Thanks!

Mark
 
Most utilites no longer install anything less than a 200A service. The firemen often just pull the meter even when there is a switch right next to it (it should be there anyway, though).
Yep, I know this to be the case.
 
I have a farm much like yours. I run the whole place (including an indoor arena) through a 100A main breaker with no problems. 100A equipment will handle the starting transients of your motors without difficulty.

John, I'm sure that you and Tony and Jim are right. Like I explained to Tony, above, a lot of this is born of being a professional paranoid who is tasked with worst-case scenario planning. It's a little hard to shut off sometimes.

Thanks!

Mark
 
So a little update is in order. After looking at things, and thinking about the size of my shop, and so on, we've decided to expand the footprint of my shop. Part of that is the recent acquisition of the Martin DLZ lathe. Part of it is that it was always going to be a little "tight" with all my stuff. The addition of the DLZ will turn "tight" into "squeaky." After talking it over with my missus, we've agreed that I'll need more floor space. Our barn is 81" x 44.5". The idea was, originally, to have a 12' center aisle, end-to-end, so that I could haul straight through with trailers etc when putting up hay and so on, or whatever. The barn was built in such a way that you could think of it as 10 16'x16' stalls, five on either side of the center aisle, and we put concrete down on the far east end, under the two end stalls and the portion of the aisle between them. The idea was that I would enclose those two stalls, one as storage, and one as my workshop. What we've decided to do, with respect to my workshop, is to expand into the adjacent stall space. So now it will be 16x32. All I have to do is pour the additional slab. So my project took a slight turn here.

Now while I work on all of that, I want to start work on the lathe electrics. Basically, at present, I've got very little electrical left remaining on the lathe. I've got a motor of unknown serviceability, and I've got some start/stop buttons on the front panel, and darned little else. I'm going to pull the motor and take it to a shop to have them check it out. If it's toast, I'll ask them how much to repair it. If not, I'll buy a new one. In the mean time, I guess I need to figure out what other components I'm going to need. Not being familiar with 3 phase motor operation, but wanting very much to learn, I want to start gathering the bits and pieces I'll need. Assume for the moment that one way or the other, I will have a 3 phase 15 hp motor, old, repaired, or new. It will be around 1750-1800rpm. I will have to provide circuits for starting, stopping, and also an accessory lamp socket, and an accessory coolant pump socket. There is also the matter of the e-stop. I've been told that this lathe was originally equipped with an electromagnetic brake. Not sure if/how that works, will need to investigate. What are the basic components I'll need to start and stop, and provide 110/120 accessory sockets? What components to make the motor run? I'm going to need to buy an enclosure, and I'll probably need some sort of fusible disconnect at the machine.

Also, speaking of all of this, I had a question about sockets for 3-phase. I'm going to wind up buying a Rotary Phase Converter to provide 3 phase 220v power to at least 4 locations in the shop. (Perhaps 5). What I need to know about doing this, apart from a couple of questions about enclosures, is are there good, reliable, perhaps not "waterproof" but some sort of socket and plug combination I can use for this without breaking the bank? I'd like to mount some kind of socket at the 4-5 locations that has a safety cover for when nothing is plugged in, and a socket type that would be somewhat protected from a splash or similar (not immersion) when something IS plugged into the socket. Now in one case, the compressor location, I'll probably just wire that in and put a disconnect there. With other locations though, I'd like to be able to plug a machine in, and unplug it and move it if needed. I just want some sort of safer socket. Ideas?

For that matter, I'd like to find something similar for my single-phase 220 equipment. I'm sure somewhere there exists a standard on this sort of thing, but I'm not really aware of it. Open to suggestions all around.

Thanks!

Mark
 
Let's start with the power distribution. I would come off of the RPC to a 3 phase distribution panel, each circuit with it's own breaker. I would run everything in conduit on the surface, that way it's easy to add to and change later. In my shop everything but the original plugs is surface mounted, including the breaker panel. All stranded wire. Standardize your 3 phase wire colors so you know which is the manufactured leg through the whole system. I would use Purple, Orange, Yellow. On wire sizes larger than 10, you may have to get Black wire, and identify the ends with colored tape. Save Black, Red, White for the single phase system. Green of course is ground in all cases.

As far as outlets, standard 30 or 50 amp, 4 pole, range or dryer outlets, but enclosed in a NEMA 3R box, like RV outlets. All of this except the 3 phase panel and breakers is available at any local big box store.

For the lathe power, you need a motor starter large enough to handle the 15 HP motor. That consists of a contactor and an overload relay. Make sure the motor starter has auxiliary contacts for the seal in circuit. You will also need a control transformer, this transforms the 240 to 120 for the control wiring. The existing start & stop buttons should work fine. If you want to add an E-stop button, just wire it in series with the stop button. You could eliminate the need for the control transformer if you use a 240V coil in the motor starter and run the buttons at full voltage.

Check with the motor rebuild guys, they may have some used stuff kicking around, a new motor starter that large is going to run about $300 for an IEC starter or about twice that for a NEMA rated starter.

For the coolant pump and lamp you could also bring in a Neutral and just run those off of 120V. You could also run the controls off of that also.

I would probably hard wire the lathe into the disconnect on the wall rather than plugging it in, it's not really portable:grin:

When you get a bit farther into it, we'll help spec out that exact hardware.
 
Let's start with the power distribution. I would come off of the RPC to a 3 phase distribution panel, each circuit with it's own breaker. I would run everything in conduit on the surface, that way it's easy to add to and change later. In my shop everything but the original plugs is surface mounted, including the breaker panel. All stranded wire. Standardize your 3 phase wire colors so you know which is the manufactured leg through the whole system. I would use Purple, Orange, Yellow. On wire sizes larger than 10, you may have to get Black wire, and identify the ends with colored tape. Save Black, Red, White for the single phase system. Green of course is ground in all cases.

As far as outlets, standard 30 or 50 amp, 4 pole, range or dryer outlets, but enclosed in a NEMA 3R box, like RV outlets. All of this except the 3 phase panel and breakers is available at any local big box store.

For the lathe power, you need a motor starter large enough to handle the 15 HP motor. That consists of a contactor and an overload relay. Make sure the motor starter has auxiliary contacts for the seal in circuit. You will also need a control transformer, this transforms the 240 to 120 for the control wiring. The existing start & stop buttons should work fine. If you want to add an E-stop button, just wire it in series with the stop button. You could eliminate the need for the control transformer if you use a 240V coil in the motor starter and run the buttons at full voltage.

Check with the motor rebuild guys, they may have some used stuff kicking around, a new motor starter that large is going to run about $300 for an IEC starter or about twice that for a NEMA rated starter.

For the coolant pump and lamp you could also bring in a Neutral and just run those off of 120V. You could also run the controls off of that also.

I would probably hard wire the lathe into the disconnect on the wall rather than plugging it in, it's not really portable:grin:

When you get a bit farther into it, we'll help spec out that exact hardware.

Jim,
Thank you. Right now, following your general idea of surface-mounting conduit was my plan, and for the reasons you mentioned. So, just for general flow in my basic thinking, I want to come off a breaker in my existing single phase load center to the RPC panel. From the RPC, I want to go into a 3 phase panel with individual breakers. From there, I want to send it out to (fused)disconnect boxes at the respective outlets/machines, correct so far? The RPC I was looking at recommends a 60 amp single phase breaker to power the RPC. That RPC will start a 20HP motor, or sustain up to 60hp of running equipment, allegedly. That should be all the 3 phase I'll ever need, even if the compressor is kicking on while I've got the lathe and mill running simultaneously. (Or am I mis-thinking here?)

Outlets will be the thing where I'll want to exercise care. I'm a big safety advocate, and I tend to think not so much about me(because if I built it and installed it, I should danged-well have some idea what I'm doing,) but because I think about down the road, when the granddaughter is running all over creation, and how I make all of that as safe as I can. I worry not so much about what's in the shop, but more about the single phase 30 amp and 3 phase outlets I want to locate for convenience's sake in the aisle section. I suppose I could place them in a lockable panel to prevent something unforeseen. It's not like the kiddo will be unattended in the shop anyway. Probably won't be permitted in there until she's a teenager. I just know how quickly things go awry with kids... And while you can prohibit access, you can't be there and watch everything 24x7x52, so I tend to think about what happens when I'm not around, or not looking. It's that professional/parental paranoid talking here.

I will definitely want to use a transformer to drop to 120v for the control circuits. That's the safest way to go, and as I said above, I'm all about safety. Talk to me about motor starters. I'm accustomed to start and run capacitors in single phase equipment, like my single phase compressor, my A/C system, and a number of other things, but I'm less clear on this "starter" business with 3 phase motors, and I'm wanting to learn. The machine has what appears to be an e-stop button(although it looks fairly ad hoc, as something either added for import in compliance with OSHA regs, or something added by the original customer for the same reason, but it's just got that look of something that got "tacked on" well after the machine was designed.) It may be that since the DLZ family was coming to an end at the time, that this way the factory's approach to complying with some reg or other to get them through the production run. Have a look:

estop_button.jpg

In any event, I don't know how it worked originally, and since most of the wiring is absent from this beast, I'm not positive what I should do with it. Here's a picture of the push-button switches and the run light socket(far right):

switches.jpg
The pump switch and the lamp switch are busted from playing with them, the lamp socket is missing its lens. The two important switches seem to be complete.

There's not much else electrical-related remaining on the machine, excepting the motor itself, and that one device that looks like a relay/contactor of some sort. It's under a cover on the back of the headstock pedestal:
relay.jpg
The only other electrical items on the machine I've identified are the socket on the back of the middle pedestal apparently for a cooling pump, and another device I found discarded laying on the end of the headstock pedestal when I removed the sheet metal cap to look at the pulleys. It was just laying there, and I don't know if its a part of this lathe, but somehow, I suspect it might be some sort of actuator having to do with the aforementioned "electromagnetic brake." That's strictly a guess, but it's got an electrical box with contacts of some sort inside, it has what looks like a plunger of some sort, and its oily, making me think it used to live inside the gearbox. Heck, it may be something else. It could be some sort of device to sense the RPM since this model was originally equipped with a spindle tachometer of some sort, though absent. Not sure. I'll grab some pictures later and post them. Maybe you guys will know.

I guess the thing is that once I have this thing offloaded and parked in the aisle, I have a little while as the new concrete work and construction goes on. I'll make time for some cleaning, and so on, in and amongst all the other doings in the barn. Oh, and one other question, unrelated to electrical... This beast has about four different shades of paint on it from over the years. What do you guys recommend for stripping the paint away? If I'm going to go through all this, I'd like it to at least not look like a wreck. I want to clean it up anyway. So I'll do a paint job on it. But the paint is chipping off in hunks in places, and it's really in need of some work. Recommendations?

Thanks!

Mark
 
Mark, I have a size 2 A-B starter here with your name on it. Also have a control xformer and an assortment of push buttons you can have your pick from here too. Price is very reasonable. I like to eat!!! So buy me lunch and the deal is made! All you have to do is get you an enclosure. I probably have other electrical goodies here from past hookups you can have too for food.
Jim mentioned using the four pole "dryer" plugs for 3-phase power hookups. That's not a good idea in my opinion. I would suggest buying true NEMA L15-30 standard plugs, either in twist lock or straight blade. These are for 240V 3-phase service. This will also make your insurance company happier too. Ken
 
I suppose I could place them in a lockable panel to prevent something unforeseen. It's not like the kiddo will be unattended in the shop anyway.

Just turn the breaker(s) off to the one(s) you're not using. Lock-out plug covers are available also, very common industrial safety equipment. You were also talking about NEMA 3R or 4 enclosures for water resistance, most of those have lockable covers.

An example of the cover I'm talking about (but not the receptacle inside) Note the locking hole on the right side. This is one type of RV outlet

upload_2016-10-1_11-18-42.png

That RPC will start a 20HP motor, or sustain up to 60hp of running equipment, allegedly. That should be all the 3 phase I'll ever need, even if the compressor is kicking on while I've got the lathe and mill running simultaneously. (Or am I mis-thinking here?)

As you bring more motors on line, they add together. So the RPC + the Lathe would give you 45 HP of RPC. No problem.

There's not much else electrical-related remaining on the machine, excepting the motor itself, and that one device that looks like a relay/contactor of some sort. It's under a cover on the back of the headstock pedestal:

Sorry that picture is so blurry that I can't tell what I am looking at.

Going to need pictures for the rest of it.
 
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