OldCarGuy's Three-Phase Power

[OldCarGuy]

Since the power company doesn't supply Three-Phase power to residential areas. One needs to create it onsite. All but two pieces of Three-Phase equipment use Rotary Phase Converters. I use a VFD on my paint booth's exhaust fan making it easy to regulate the air flow. And I ordered my Vertical Band Saw with a built-in VFD making it easy to select blade speed. I prefer RFC because of the instant start and reversing features and equal power between each leg. Getting better surface finish on surface grinders and mills over VFD. Plus I'd need five separate VFD to run my Kerney & Trecker Mill alone (one for each motor)..

The main 200Amp 240 Volt Single Phase load center in on the far right. That feed my three Rotary Phase Converters. A 5-HP GWM RFC, a 10-HP DES-CO, and a 15HP American Rotary Converter. I can run any one, any two at a time, or all three converters at a time. There's a series of relays so they don't back-feed power else where. All my machines can run of the 5-HP Converter. Except for the Lathe with a 15 HP motor and needs either the combination of the 5-HP plus 10-HP Converters or the 15-HP by its' self. The Cleveland CNC Bed Mill I only use the 15-HP American Rotary Converter. For the sake of the best quality three phase power. All the Three-Phase output goes to the Three-Phase load center with eight three pole breakers.

Most of my machines have a dedicated breaker and wired directly in the cabinet. I do have six Three-Phase twist lock receptacles around the shop. And use the same color coded wires for the three legs plus a green for ground. That way it doesn't matter what receptacles to use and motors are always rotating in the correct direction. The yellow wire is dedicated for the made up leg. And never used in the machines control transformer circuit.

Three-Phase Load Center

Paint booth fan VFD

Power Vertical Band Saw

 

[Weldingrod1]

It's great to see electrical done right!

I used the same "every single 3 phase outlet must turn the same way" when I did the shop at work! Really handy being able to drag over an HPU or welder and have it work right the first time

Sent from my SM-S911U using Tapatalk

 

[Ultradog MN]

Just giving you a thumbs up - for the very tidy on the wall electrical and for RPCs in general. I have a 7 1/2 hp rpc. It cost me about $200 to build and will run any of the eight 3 phase machines I now have in my shop.

 

[RandyM]

Well done. Love the labels.

 

[rwm]

Very nice setup! I have no 3 phase tools but I will someday. I have a few basic questions on your setup. Why are there fuses in there? Won't the breakers be sufficient? How do you run one motor on 2 RPCs? Will the phases always be in sync so you can just run them in parallel?

 

[projectnut]

Nice work. I only hope your shop is in a more permanent state than mine ever seems to be. The first iteration of wiring my shop was hard wiring the machines using conduit similar to what you've done. It worked fine for the 6 machines I had at the time. That didn't last long, however. Once I retired, I started adding one or two machines a year.

Each time a new machine came along the floor plan changed and everything had to be rewired. I finally settled on rows of outlets in the open ceiling and flexible cords to the machines. Since the original iteration I think the floor plan has had significant changes at least a dozen times. some machines have been added while others have been passed on to others. I just added machine number 24 and had to change the wiring one more time to accommodate the power requirements of the latest acquisition.

I don't have any more room in the shop for more machinery, but I did just acquire a generator capable of producing single phase and 3 phase power. It's another project in progress. If it works out as planned, it can be used as a backup generator for the house. At some point in the future, it may also be used to power the 3 phase machines in the shop.

 

[OldCarGuy]

Very nice setup! I have no 3 phase tools but I will someday. I have a few basic questions on your setup. Why are there fuses in there? Won't the breakers be sufficient? How do you run one motor on 2 RPCs? Will the phases always be in sync so you can just run them in parallel?

The fuses are to protect the equipment and wiring upstream if a phase is out of order or shorted out to a ground before the breaker is tripped. Extra precaution. The phases have to be in sink to run two or more RPC at one time. Hence use of common color coded wiring scheme. In my case the "made up Leg" is always yellow. And in never used on the machine wired for any control transformers. The the legs are marked on the back of the three-phase receptacle "W, X, Y, and Z". W terminal is GROUND with the tang on the blade. The following codes on wiring:

Wire #1=Brown wire=X terminal
Wire #2=Orange wire=Y terminal
Wire #3=Yellow wire=Z terminal
Wire #4=Green wire=W terminal