Posts: 3,798
Threads: 184
Joined: Jun 2012
Location: Farmington Hills, Michigan
Thanks for the Variac suggestion Darren. I hooked it up, substituting a light bulb for the ammeter and everything powered up and operated as planned. It's ready for a full power check, but not until I get water in the tanks to protect the heating elements in case of unplanned activation. Time to start pulling wire for the new outlet.
Tom
Posts: 4,683
Threads: 93
Joined: Feb 2012
Location: Perth, Australia
Greetings from Frankfurt airport!
Tom - good move, given the voltage and current draw of the heaters I would have first tested with them out of circuit as you did.
Bill - sorry for my tongue in cheek comment, which obviously didn't come across as intended.
Hunting American dentists since 2015.
Posts: 3,798
Threads: 184
Joined: Jun 2012
Location: Farmington Hills, Michigan
This week was fairly productive. I managed to get the 50A line run without electrocuting myself and did some rewiring on the controller with minimal smoke. After some testing, I realized the solid state relay output of the controllers was only nine volts which wasn't enough to operate the LED indicators on the switches. Consequently I had to add a 12VDC supply and rewire the controlling side of the relays. Somewhere along the way, I had a brain fart and wired something up wrong. When I turned it on, all of the SSR's turned on even though the switches were off and when I turned the switches on, the SSR's turned off.
After several hours of troubleshooting, I found the problem and corrected it, but when I turned it on, there was a loud pop and lots of smoke...never a good thing in electrical work. It turns out that all the jostling around loosened one of the 110V controller power wires and it nestled up against another 110V terminal and arced a bit. After I changed my underwear, I buttoned everything up and it all worked as planned so I filled up all the tanks with water and did a wet test. Tomorrow I'll mix up the chemicals and do a little anodizing.
Tom