Electrical Work: Wiring for my American Rotary Phase Converter

[Music] hello Keith rocky ridge Machinery's org well if it looks a little darker in the shop tickly behind me here today is because we got the power cut off to the shop right now I think I mentioned the previous video I've been working the last week or two doing some electrical work to get my rotary face rotor I've got an American rotary 40 horsepower face inverter that I've been wanting to get hooked up and where we can actually utilize that three-phase power in the shop didn't work on that last couple of weeks and will I finally got to the point where I need to have the power company come out and disconnect me temporarily so that we could go ahead and finish that installation and get it ready to go so I'll tell you what let's uh take you outside I'm going to show you a little bit of my electrical work and show you what all we're doing so before we really get into this video I just want to start out up front and tell you guys I am NOT a licensed electrician I am NOT an expert when it comes to electrical code I worked for electrician for several years when I was in high school I understand the principles my dad was actually an electrical business for a period of time and so I understand a lot of it but I am NOT a licensed electrician I have consulted with Elektra some electricians in fact one person who really kind of helped me out on this with Stenson Kowski over at bar Z and I actually have talked to a couple other guys as well to kind of make sure what I'm doing up is up to code I've also been working with my local County which has got to come out and do a final inspection on this they have not done that yet we've got them scheduled they should be out here soon but just up front guys I'm showing you what I've done but if you got some questions or concerns you know so be it I'm trying my best to do this as close to are up to code completely hot throughout so anyway what we're doing out here this is my meter base and basically as part of this installation it really was kind of been dragging along a little bit for me is is that I wanted to upgrade my power coming into the shop the shop I put in a 200 amp service coming into the shop and I quickly realized that I had made a mistake but I really should have put in a 400 amp service 200 amps really could could power the shop but with some some things that I'm thinking down the road it's kind of on the edge where I need to be I taught with my power companies had no problem that they would come out here and upgrade me to 400 amps of course I had to do the electrical work to get it ready so I took my old 200 amp meter base off which is why I had to get the power company out here disconnect everything you can see that the old feed wires coming in here these are not hot right now they've all been disconnected from the transformer but they we took out the 200 amp meter base the power company provided me with a 400 amp meter base and we've got this on here so inside this corner that meter base basically what I'm doing is I'm splitting this into two 200 amp feeds and I've already had the shop wired I've got a 200 amp main panel inside the shop right behind this wall actually these wires go through the wall directly into the box behind it so that 200 amps is feeding the lights the receptacles pretty much the main single-phase power in the shop so what I've done is basically we've got that coming out but we've added a whole nother service over here and next to it what I've got is a another 200 amp this is actually a so it's a load center but it has passed through lugs in the bottom I'm basically just using it as a as a disconnect however as opposed to just using a disconnect here I opted to go with a panel or breaker panel for a couple of reasons number one I've got more room in here to work number two if for some reason down the road I wanted to put some more circuits in and I needed them up here I could tap in here and put some more breakers in here I really doubt I'll ever do that but I have that flexibility because you never know what your needs may be down the road but the biggest thing here is according to codes you have to have coming out of your your meter base you have to have a disconnect within I think it's ten feet it's not very far so any lines that come out of there you have to have a disconnect within about ten feet of that so in the case here I'm using two panels as my disconnects of course we have a disconnect up to the top of the main load Center inside the shop that serves as a disconnect this box here serves as the disconnect again pass through lugs so the 200 amps come in the top 200 amps is going out of the bottom and I basically got some direct Barry cable that's going to go around the shop to where the phase converter is and we'll go around over there and show you that part so our direct Barry cable is buried in the ground a minimum of two feet deep it's a little bit deeper that in place so that we make sure we trench tin had to hand dig that too just because it's so close to the shop but couldn't get in here with a trench or a backhoe or anything so actually hired my buddy miles MacDonald who's a college student he watches my channel he came out here and dug this over his spring break made a little cash but anyway the power comes up and we go into yet another load center breaker box here and inside this breaker box we will be using this for putting in some new circuits the big one of course is going to the rotary phase converter sitting here next to me so basically got a 150 amp breaker in here this is a 4-pole so basically to get that amperage through a regular on/off breaker you got two poles on on each of the tooth lines there at half of that so it'd be basically there's 475 amp breakers in here two for each of the legs that goes out of this wire goes into the rotary phase converter this is an American rotary 40 horsepower phase converter this is a model that's made to be outside so I've got it outside it's actually kind of right on the drip line here the building I'm going to come in here pretty soon I'm gonna build a little shed over this I'm also going to probably put an air compressor right here so eventually pretty soon again I'll have a little doghouse out here whether you want to call it for added protection over this but for right now it is under the east it really doesn't matter this thing is designed to be out in the elements so every time that I talk about 30 face power and rotary face convergence I always get a lot of questions like why do you need a rotary face convertor why don't you just call your power company and have them come out and put three-phase in the shop well that would be my first choice if that was a choice the problem is is it's not a choice at least not for me not where I live here in the US unlike a lot of other countries which will very regularly put three-phase power right into a residential home here in the US that's pretty rare pretty much what people have is 220 volt single phase which is basically to 110 legs off of three-phase so they basically two of those legs into your home and that's what you got to work with in some cases if you are close to where the three-phase power is like on a major road where the power company has it you can convince them to hook a shop like this up in my situation I'm about three quarters of a mile from the nearest three-phase on the pole and it's just unpractical for me to get my power company to come out here and put in in my case would be underground service because I'm in a residential area they're just not going to do it and if they did do it the cost will be on me and for a home shop they're not going to sell enough three-phase power to pay for that over any period of time so it's just really just not an option so the way we get around our way I'm getting around that is using a rotary phase converter I've got this unit here from American rotary American rotary is a sponsor of my channel and they really helped me by getting this as a 40 horsepower rotary face inverter basically has a 40 horsepower three-phase motor in it and the gist of how this thing works is we take the single-phase power we take those two legs off of the three-phase that comes into our shop here and we feed that into that three-phase motor and then using some capacitors that are all engineered into this box once you get that motor spinning it'll actually spin not under a load but just free spin just using the legs and basically what the motors doing this is a very oversimplified version of it but it's generating that third leg it's generating that third leg of the three-phase power and using single-phase you can use rotary phase converter to generate three-phase power to put into your shop and that's what I'm doing these American rotary units are great and if you're interested in one or you need one for your shop I know a lot of my viewers in the US or I get a lot of questions about these they do have a deal where if you purchase one from them they have a checkout code or if you talk to them on the phone you can give them the coupon code vintage ten just that word vintage ten since they are sponsor on my channel and they will actually give you a 10% discount if you need to purchase a rotary phase converter so just keep that in mind if you're in the market for one so now we're inside the shop again and basically right behind me this wall here is the rotary phase converter that line that comes in comes in to the back through the wall into the back of this panel and what we have here is a three phase load Center so instead of being a regular two phase flow centers as a three phase load Center the only thing that will power out of here is our three-phase feeds that will then go to the different machines in the shop I've got just one receptacle plugged in right here right now into the box just something to start with right now I can just run a cord through here eventually as I have time and money and everything else I'll be running conduit out of this and running drops in various places throughout the shop where I can then plug my machines in and that will all come back to this load Center again with a 40 horsepower phase converter I'll be generating a bit of power it will not be a problem for most of my machines to be able to run multiple Sheen's at one time should I choose to do so or should I have the need to do so you know when I fire up the big monarch which have this got does if I put the twenty horse motor in there that came in and originally you know that might be the kind of the limits of what it would do but in reality I could probably even run at least one other machine off with with that with this face it should power anything I've got to run in here but anyway we'll be running more circuits out of this as time permits but with that sorry guys no machining content this week because I don't have any power to turn on any machines I've got some work that I need to do but we got to get this electrical work done next step is I just finished this up this evening I'm shooting this on the Thursday evening after work I'll be contacting the county in the morning to see when they can get their inspector to come out he'll take a quick look at on the wiring everything should be fine and up to code like I said I've talked with multiple people to make sure that everything is cool and assuming everything is cool cool which I think it will be they'll sign off on it call the power company power company will come in and get me hooked back up so hopefully within the next week we'll have our power back home and we'll have good three-phase power in the shop so with that that's pretty much going to be a wrap again sorry I don't have more this week I do want to just make one further comment though and I try not to plug this too much but all this electrical work that I'm doing I've been putting it off and putting it off a little bit mainly because it's fairly expensive and I still got some more expenses to do with running all the new circuits that come out of here and what's really enabled me to do this is much the guys out there you guys out there who are sponsoring my channel through patreon I've been using that patreon money saving that patreon money up and that's what is really helping me with a lot of these shop improvements so I want to specifically thank all of my patreon supporters out there because without you guys it might be who knows win before I could actually get this done so thank you thank you very much to all those patreon supporters thank you to all of my viewers and subscribers out there for just watching that's plenty good enough that's all I need from anybody out there just keep watching my channel that's my main goal but I do want to just personally say thank you to those patreon supporters who did help make this possible and if you would like the support my channel through patreon there's a link at the end of the video there's a link down in the description and I think there's even a link on the homepage where you can click on that and the support the channel through patreon not a requirement but always appreciated so with that guys thank you very much for watching and I hope to have some power back in here very soon so that we can get on some projects because I've got a long list of work that needs to be done and we're going to get onto it just as soon as we can thanks for watching we'll talk to you later [Music]

Channel: Keith Rucker - VintageMachinery.org

Views: 66,188

Rating: 4.9298244 out of 5

Keywords: Machine Shop, Machinist, Lathe, Milling Machine, Restoration, Vintage Machinery, Georgia Museum of Agriculture, Woodworking, Metalworking, How to run a lathe, how to run a mill, Keith Rucker, VintageMachinery.org

Id: n2-B8NpkRmo

Length: 13min 59sec (839 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 24 2017