Electricity Aspect Oddball Thread

I'd like to submit this for Electrical Oddball points:

I was putting tongue and groove boards up in the basement and found a spot where a wire was run under the floor joists instead of through them (it's the white romex one).  It ran from an outlet in a finished wall to a junction box in the ceiling (luckily).  So I had to disconnect it in the junction box, drill holes in the joists and re-run it back to the box.

If I had to call this project something, I'd name it "Relocate existing wire run less than 20 feet".

I have another oddball electrical submission.  I installed a circulating pump for my greenhouse heat battery.  I needed to wire on a cord/plug to plug it into an outlet and see if everything worked.  This was wired well enough to be its permanent power source.

I am submitting for consideration my work installing a new battery bank for my household off-grid solar system.  It is a 48 volt system in which the batteries started going bad last winter.  I kept pulling bad batteries out of the bank so they wouldn't be an extra drain on the remaining ones, hoping to stretch the life of the bunch out as long as I could.  However, I did shop around and purchase the 8 new batteries so I'd have them ready to go in.  I was initially going to get the exact same brand battery but after much searching I found a different brand that was roughly $1000 cheaper for the set.  (I hate shopping but with that kind of savings it was like getting paid several hundred dollars an hour to do it!!)  The downside was that these new ones have a different style connector so I needed to buy materials/tools to make new jumpers as well.  (This extra cost was factored into the final price I might add.)  At some point I plan to make a detailed blog post about the whole process at my blog site, www.theartisthomestead.com, but it hasn't happened yet.

The hardest part was moving these batteries around myself at over 150 lbs each.  (lift with your legs not your back!)  Unfortunately the freight truck that delivered them couldn't drop them off at all close to where they go, but I knew that from the start.  I'll include some shots of making the jumpers and then wiring it all together.  Four batteries each get wired into series making a 48 volt set, with 2 sets total.  Then the sets are wired in parallel together.  It wasn't a hard job.  All told I think I spent 2 or 3 hours removing the old batteries, making the cables, and installing the new ones.  You could add a couple more hours for hauling the batteries from the end of my drive to the pole barn on the back edge of the property, but that's not really electrical work.

Hmm...  I got a "comment too long" error.  I guess I'll delete some of the photos.  If you want more let me know and I'll post them in a second comment.

I'd like to submit this for an oddball.

I needed to add a exhaust fan to my bunny barn, so here is me using an old computer cord, and wiring up the fan.

The fan was upcycled from a friends project that he didn't need, and I have ALL my old cord because you never know when you need them for a project,

I'll preface by saying that I am a sparky (Australian for Electrician) by trade and to have a switchboard like this was irritating me for the longest time.

So as a means to make me sane again and future proof my house for eventual grid-tied batteries I decided to overhaul my switchboard and increase its size to the biggest it can be.

Start time: 11:00
Finish time: 13:30

I had all materials and all equipment that I needed.

The switches that I upgraded went from standard circuit breakers to RCBO's or (GFCI breakers for my American friends) except for the solar breakers because changing that to an RCBO messes with the feed in capability to the grid.

Overall very happy with the work eith no need to fault find (which is always a relief) and hoping for max points since this is my field of speciality. Cheers!

I initially thought this might go for the troubleshoot and fix and electrical appliance BB.  While I did need to troubleshoot the issue with my off-grid photovoltaic system in the end I'm not really fixing an electrical appliance.  Instead I am replacing it, and sending the old faulty one back to the manufacture for repair.  It will become a back up unit for me should future issues arise.  So that makes the electricity oddball category seem like the best spot to me.  Please let me know if there is a better spot.

So anyway, my solar system happens to have two separate solar arrays for reasons that annoy me which I won't get into.  As it turns out this provided resilience that saved my bacon, or at least kept me from going without power.  The two different arrays each have their own charge controller.  One morning while clearing snow off the panels I saw that one of the arrays wasn't generating any power while the other was putting out several hundred watts.  They are never the exact same, but no power and hundreds of watts was a clear indication of an issue needing attention!  I worried that perhaps a panel had gone bad.  Then I noticed the charge controller for the bad array was registering voltage, just no amps or watts.  Investigating further it seems the voltage it showed was consistent with the open circuit voltage (VOC) for the panels in that array.  This told me the panels themselves were fine there was just no load on them when there should be.  That strongly suggested the charge controller for that array being the issue since everything else in the system was functioning.  Thankfully I did have the second array to power everything.  Thankfully too the sun finally began making more regular appearances just at that time.  Only a week before and the one array would not have been sufficient.  

The trouble shooting guide for the charge controller did list my issue and recommended if I had it to call the manufacturer.  I peeked in at the internal guts of the unit but didn't see any obvious thing I could identify as bad and fixable by me with my skill set.  Knowing the manufacturer would not be quick even if they were right on top of things I decided to order a new replacement so I could get my system fully functional before the weather changed and became cloudy again.  (Quite possible this time of year where I am!)

I thought this would be a simple swap out.  Ha!  So I have now learned there are locking nuts for conduit pipe fittings.  They work really really really good at locking in place and never backing out!  It would just dig into the softish aluminum of the case and not turn any more.  In the end, after a bit of swearing and stopping to take deep relaxing breaths, I found I had to break the nut to remove it.  Due to it's tight location this was best done with a drill.  (I swear it acted like hardened steel too when trying to drill!)  Eventually I got through it, breaking it open, then bending and twisting it enough to remove.  After that it was a fairly straightforward job.  

I made sure to take reference photos of where all the wires were and how the various jumper setting were set.  That allowed me to easily hook up the new unit as the old one was.  Once powered up I did also need to go in and program all the various settings to match what they were and get it linked in its "follow me" mode with the second charge controller.

All is happy again in my homestead photovoltaic land.  The defective unit will be shipping out tomorrow for eventual repair.  Then it will be stored away to be on hand and ready the next time a unit fails.

All told I spent over 3.5 hours on this job, which is a silly amount of time.  Part of that was the need to run to the hardware store for a new locking nut since I had to destroy the old one to remove it.  I don't know if a professional would have an easy way to remove it.  I think they still would have had to break it somehow to get it off, but they would have known that rather quickly.  My guess is that a pro could have been done in 30 to 45 minutes.

For towing/hauling I use a 2017 F350 Lariat pickup truck that came with the factory tailgate camera only which is great for backing up to bumper-pull trailers. However, backing up to gooseneck trailers isn't as easy because the gooseneck ball in the bed of the truck is not visible from the drivers seat, even if I sit up high with my butt off the seat. Unfortunately, the truck didn't come with the factory center high mount stop light (CHMSL) camera (aka cargo camera), and swapping out the factory CHMSL without camera for one with the camera isn't possible since the wiring harness in the cab of the truck is different from the factory depending on whether the CHMSL had a camera or not. After researching on the web, I decided I wanted to add the OEM CHMSL w/ camera and activated/switched with the factory installed upfitter switch to flip between the tailgate camera and the cargo camera when backing up. Use when backing up only is ok with me for hooking up gooseneck trailers. Some folks want to have the cargo camera on when not backing up, but I don't need that and getting that to work requires some different parts.

So I purchased an OEM CHMSL with camera with the pigtail attached (this is important, be sure to get one with the wiring pigtail attached to it, which is about 12" long).

Part Number: HC3Z-13A613-D

Ebay Listing: 17-21 F250 F150 LED Third 3rd Brake Light w/Camera OEM Tow Vision High Mount

I then purchased a video switching t-harness that inserts between the back of the 8" screen in the dash and the factory wiring harness.

T-Harness

https://tailgatecamera.com/products/...s-2013-current

It is very simple to connect. Simply disconnect the factory harness from the back of the screen and plug the t-harness into the back of the screen and then plug the factory harness into the t-harness. The t-harness taps into the video feed coming from the tailgate camera and routes it through a video switching device that switches to an alternative video feed (the cargo camera) when it receives 12v power. The video switching unit on t-harness came with three wires leads stubbed out of it. One is a ground wire. One is a power lead with a mechanical toggle switch, which I cut off because I'm using the upfitter switch for that purpose. The third wire was a video cable will yellow RCA style terminal on the end, which I also cut off and exposed the two wires inside the video cable. The ground and power lead wires I attached using butt connectors to the ring terminal ends of a 16 AWG SAE Battery Charger Kit which I cut the ring terminals off of and inserted into the butt connectors. By doing this, the power and ground now have a nice snap connector to connect/disconnect easily. I used heat shrink butt connectors. I strip the insulation off the end of the wires using a Wire Stripper Tool. I then insert them into the butt connectors and crimp the connector using a Wire Connector Crimping Tool Kit.


After crimping, I then used a Heat Shrink Gun to shrink the butt connector shroud around the wires.


I forgot several times, but when I remembered, I would slip a section of Heat Shrink Tubing – 3:1 Black over one of the wires before joining the butt connector, and then after heat shrinking the butt connection, I slipped the heat shrink tubing down the wire over the butt connection and shrank it down as tight as it would go. Sometimes it wouldn't get totally tight on the small wires, but I figured it would help reinforce the wire to butt connector connection. The power lead butt connector that connected the battery charger lead to the video switching unit lead I also inserted a second 18 AWG red wire into the video switching unit side of the butt connector. This wire will send power to the new camera via a Molex MX-150 6-Pin Housing Male connector from a Molex MX-150 6-Pin Housing Set (contains both female and male and all necessary 18-22 AWG terminals). I crimped an 18-22 AWG male terminal onto the end of the 18 AWG red wire using a Wire Terminal Crimping Tool. After crimping the terminal, I used a Soldering Iron to solder the end of the wire inside the terminal just to be sure the connection would be good.


Then I inserted that terminal into Pin#1 position of the 6-Pin Male connector. I then took about a 16" piece of 18 AWG wire, added a male terminal to one end and inserted it into Pin#2 position of the 6-Pin Male connector. This wire I don't currently plan to use, but in the future if I wanted the backup guide lines to show on the cargo camera then I would need to connect this wire stub to Pin#37 on the BCM module which is on the right side of the passenger foot area side wall. This wire is referred to as the CTRL MOD CAMERA LIN BUS. Next I added a male terminal to the video cable negative wire (smaller black wire that was previously connected to the outer housing of the yellow RCA jack) and inserted it into Pin#3 position of the 6-Pin Male connector. I added a male terminal to the video cable positive wire (yellow wire previously connected to the center pin of the yellow RCA jack) and inserted it into Pin#4 position of the 6-Pin Male connector. Then I took about a 16" piece of 18 AWG wire, added a male terminal to one end and inserted it into Pin#5 of the 6-Pin Male connector. This wire will serve as the video cable shield wire, so I used a butt connector to splice it into the t-harness wire that connects to Pin 33 of the t-harness. To do that, I located Pin 33 of the t-harness, confirming which one it was by connector shape and by double-confirming by viewing it's relative position to pins 14 and 15 which had been pre-spliced with video cables by the manufacturer of the t-harness. Once located, I cut the wire near the middle and then rejoined it with the butt splice with the additional wire added on one side of the butt splice. I then used Wiring Harness Tape to tape together loose wires into a neat bundle.

This completes the assembly of the modified t-harness that will get installed behind the 8" screen in the dash.


To connect this t-harness to the cargo camera, the 6-Pin Male connector will be connected to a 6-Pin Female connector (for the male/female that were bought as a pair above). The wire connecting the t-harness to the cargo camera will need to be about 25ft long, so I purchased a 26ft Video Cable meant for car cameras. The 25 ft cable will need to have 5 wires total. The first wire will be the power supply for the camera. I used the 18 AWG red wire from a roll of 18 AWG 50ft red and black pair wire and crimped and soldered a female terminal on one end of the wire to insert into Pin#1 of the 6-Pin Female connector. The second wire will be the CTRL MOD CAMERA LIN BUS, which I don't plan to use initially, but figured it would be smart to add it now in case I change my mind later. I crimped and soldered a female terminal on one end of the 18 AWG black wire to insert into Pin#2 of the 6-Pin Female connector.

For the remaining three wires, I took the 25 ft video cable and cut the yellow RCA jacks off both ends and then stripped the insulation back about 2 inches to expose the foil shield, the yellow insulated wire, the red insulated wire, and the uninsulated shield copper strands. I removed the foil shield, and twisted the uninsulated shield wires into a single coil. I inserted the smallest head shrink tubing that I had over each of the three wires and shrank it down with the head shrink gun. I used black Heat Shrink Tubing – 2:1 Colors on the shield wire, yellow tubing on the yellow wire, and blue tubing on the red wire since I didn't have small red tubing. I then added one larger black heat shrink tube over all three wires at the base where they joined back into the video cable to help reinforce that area.

I then added female terminals to each of these three wires and inserted the negative wire in Pin#3 of the 6-Pin Female connector, the positive wire in Pin#4, and the shield wire in Pin#5. I used an electrical multi-tester's "conductivity" mode to test the wires to remind myself which one was positive (center pin of yellow RCA connector) and which was negative (outer housing of yellow RCA connector).


On the other end of the 26 ft which was now closer to 25 ft after cutting off the yellow RCA jacks from each end leaving a 5" pig tail on each in case I decided to use them later (which I didn't), I used the same procedure of cutting off the yellow RCA jack, stripping the insulation back about 2 inches, and installing heat shrink tubing. On this end of the wire, I will install a Molex MX-150 8-Pin Housing Male (comes with 18-22 AWG terminals) that will insert into the OEM 8-Pin Female Housing on the end of the pigtail that came with the OEM CHMSL w/Camera.

So this end of the 26 ft cable will require crimping and soldering male terminals to insert into the 8-Pin Male connector. The pin positions are the same as the other end:
1. 18 AWG red power lead wire
2. 18 AWG black LIN BUS wire
3. Video cable negative wire
4. Video cable positive wire
5. Video cable shield wire

After assembling the 6-Pin Female connector on one end of the 25 ft 5-wire cable and the 8-Pin Male connector on the other end, I used the wiring harness tape and taped the video cable wire (which has three wires inside it), the red power wire, and the black LIN BUS wire together into one combined harness.


Now I have two harnesses built - the customized t-harness and the 25 ft harness. It is time to "bench test" them. Before installing them behind the interior panels of the cab, I wanted to test that it worked in case I connected a wire incorrectly or had a bad connection, I didn't want to have to install it twice into the tough to reach spots hidden behind the interior paneling of the truck cab. I used a Auto Trim Removal Tool to pop open the two panels above the 8" screen.

After removing the first panel, it exposes a speaker and there were two screws which then need to be removed near the speaker to allow the second panel to be popped out with the trim removal tool. Once the second panel was loose, I disconnected the speaker wire connector on the back of the speaker to free the panel completely.




I then reached behind the 8" screen and disconnected the 54 pin connector. There is a little lever that must be move about 90 degrees to free the connector. But to free the lever, you need to depress a little tab next to it. It is tricky, so practice first on the one that came with the t-harness. It should be the same design. With the connector disconnected, I then connected the t-harness to the back of the 8" screen and to the loose end of the disconnected 54 pin connector. Now the t-harness is installed.

Standing in the bed of the truck, I unscrewed the four screws hold the OEM CHMSL without camera and gently pulled it away from the truck. It felt stuck on there, but eventually the foam seal released with some pulling.



I disconnected the wire connector from the back of the CHMSL and connected it to the new OEM CHMSL with camera (first disconnecting the small connector connecting three wires to the back of the CHMSL to allow the spot to be used by the connector coming from the truck). Now the CHMSL with camera has two wire whips connected to it, one with three wires coming from the truck, and one with 5 wires in connected to an 8-Pin Female connector. Push this 8-Pin Female connector into the truck cab, forcing it downward. From inside the cab, reach up behind the ceiling panel, grab the 8-Pin connector and pull it an inch or two into the cab so that it is handing freely. Reinstall the four screws into the new CHMSL with camera and snug them up so that the new foam gasket seals. Note that the screws go into plastic, so don't force them too tight and strip the plastic threads!

I then connected the 6-Pin connector of the 25ft harness to the 6-Pin connector of the t-harness and ran the cable straight to the back of the cab over the top of the center console. This is a "bench test" - just a dry run to see if it works, so the routing of the cable wasn't important. The 8-Pin connector on the other end of the 25 ft harness then plugged into the 8-Pin connector on the OEM wire whip. So the camera is now connected to the t-harness. However, there is no power going to the camera yet, nor to the video switching device.

For power, I used the other piece of wire cable that came with the 16 AWG SAE Battery Charger Kit. From behind the 8" screen, I dropped one end of that wire cable downward toward the gas pedal. I don't know if I just got lucky or what but it almost made it all the way to the gas pedal. I reach up from under by the pedal and grabbed the end of it an pulled all but about a foot of the cable through. The foot of cable up by the screen I then connected to the SAE connector on the t-harness. Be sure that you get the red wires on the same side of the connector so that red goes to red and black to black.

Now down by the gas pedal the wire can be routed up under the dash toward the driver side door side panel and then over to a grommet in the firewall. Run the wire through a hole poked through the grommet and then access it from under the hood. Cut the SAE connector off the end of the wire (or buy a second Battery Charger Kit) and use a heat shrink butt connector to splice the red wire to the upfitter switch wire that is under the fuse box right there not too far from the grommet in the firewall. The fuse box is on the driver side of the engine compartment. Attach a heat shrink ring terminal to the black wire and affix the ring terminal to the negative terminal stud on the battery.

Now it is time to test everything. Start the truck. With your foot hold the break, put the truck in reverse and the tailgate camera should display. Then flip the upfitter switch and the cargo camera should display. It worked for me on the first try, thankfully.



Now that I know it works, it is time to re-route the 25 ft cable. Fitting the whole connector on one end of the cable through tight spaces would be difficult so to make it easier I removed the connector. First I removed the 5 terminals from the 6-Pin connector and used wiring harness tape to tape them together tightly so that they were not much larger than the rest of the wiring harness. Then, after removing the rubber weather seal around both the driver side door frames, I starting from the 8-Pin connector at the CHMSL route the cable along the backside of the headliner toward the driver side, then continuing above the driver side rear window, through the top of the center pillar, above the driver's door window, down along the front pillar into the side of the dash area, and then follow the Battery Charger kit cable up into the dash behind the 8" screen. Once there, I re-inserted the 5 terminals into the 6-Pin connector and then connect it to the 6-pin connector on the t-harness. It turned out that there was quite a bit of extra cable (20 ft probably would have been sufficient) so I coiled it up and stuffed it into the space behind the screen. I tested it again to make sure it still works, then reinstalled the speaker wire connector and two dash panels.

Now I can see the gooseneck ball when I'm backing up to connect a gooseneck trailer.

I salvaged a broken kitchen appliance (air fryer with something flinky in the electronics...it sometimes decided to ignore the set time and shut off OR reset itself for 80 minutes And the face plate seemed to enjoy falling off even after the judicious application of Duct tape) for usable parts and separated the other components for recycling...

I used paper bags that will be composted to protect my work surface.

I'm going to practice (de) soldering on the circuit boards. I'll probably submit that separately.

In total I obtained a burner and burner pan, a fan motor with 2 blades and a spacer, a temperature sensor, a manual switch (door open sensor), a rotisserie motor, a light, the 110V ungrounded plug (wonderful for lamps), some miscellaneous wires, three spacer brackets, and another temperature sensor. And a small piece of glass that was covering the lightbulb that I'll use for crafts. Oh! and a baby food jar of multiple sizes of small philips screws, a few washers, and jump rings/lock nuts.

I separated all the metal from the plastic also. I used several sizes of Philipps screwdrivers, a magnetic retrieval wand, another magnet, a leatherman, a flathead screwdriver and a paint scraper.  The whole thing actually took several hours on two different days.

I repaired my rice cooker.

Here is my submission for Oddball points in the Electricity Aspect.

I have been using this floor lamp (with shelves) as my desk lighting for several years but it has never really met my lighting needs.  I decided to deconstruct it and convert it into a "table" lamp that will sit on a shelf (to be installed above my desk and eye-line) to provide better lighting for working on desk/office/computer projects.  Even though I have not yet raised the lamp above my desk yet it is much better than it was as a floor lamp.

Here is my submission for Oddball points in the Electricity Aspect.

The thermostat for the furnace was performing inconsistently so here is the replacement project.

Here is my submission for Oddball points in the Electricity Aspect.

The ceiling fan and light combo in my sister's bedroom needed a replacement so I took apart/removed the old one and installed a new one.  The wiring was unusual as it was installed in the 70's so I spent some time learning and reinstalling until I got it right.

The problem is that the light pulls (photo #2) had a small weight that got caught when the bedding was fluffed one day and broke the light cover.  The new unit has a lower profile so it is closer to the ceiling and does not have dangly bits.

Question for the moderator(s):
I recently built out a 30kVa 480V-3ph transformer to service a variety of machine-shop tools. This was done for my paying work-job, but was a fun, moderately complex, and potentially-farm-grid-applicable effort. Lots of midcentury farms are fed 3-phase, and some farmers are competent machinists with a "fix what you can't buy" ethos.
So the question - may I submit this, with detailed photos & description, for oddball points here? Or is there a (perhaps reasonable) sense that 480V-3ph doesn't really count as permaculture?
Thanks,
Mark

I think that would be fine, go for it!

[Edit: responding to the good Mr. Barkley's sensible question about how long it took, which was silly not to include - sorry!
This was an afternoons-after-meetings project for about 2 weeks, except for a nearly full day on trolley+crating+finishing-the-final-inch because I had ordered the freight pickup in order to light a fire to finish it. It adds up to about 24hrs all told. It would have been less for a shop electrician working steadily.]

Hey PEP-folks,
(And Mike, I'm taking you at your word! I'll try to make it worthwhile.)

My (remote) employer is a startup firm, so we all wear lots of hats. My colleagues had acquired some bargain machine tools, but the facility is poorly-provisioned for power, so the machines sat idle. I'm a licensed engineer and an AZ-licensed electrician, so I thought I might help do something about the situation. The feed available is a 30A-480V-3phase circuit. The loads are a 50A-220V-1ph compressor, a 25A-220V-1ph bandsaw, a 30A-220V-1ph laser, and a 2hp-220V-3ph mill, plus a request for some 120V-1ph "regular" plugs.

How does this relate to Otis? There are a number of farms out there with 3-phase electricity, and a search will reveal a number of ag-extensions that recommend 3-phase power, especially if you have a lot of motors. For motors, it's hands-down the best way to feed them, for reasons that Maxwell's laws explain, but basically, easier to make a motor turn by wiggling the field in 3 places than in 2 places (which is called single-phase). Any real EEs here can tar-and-feather me for my simplicity as a MechE, but there you go. A larger farm that performs on-site processing at any level will probably have a mix of pumps, blowers, lift motors, etc. Are these all going to go idle when Otis (or his electrician) retires? Will off-site service calls be required because a SKIPPER can't read a wiring diagram? Will motors be blown or the barn burned down because of a misunderstanding of 3ph vs 1ph and the different amperages drawn for the same horsepower? Heaven forbid! There's the rhetorical piece, now on to the problem-solving.

Whenever alternating current needs to change voltages, you deploy a transformer. Maxwell is again the man of the hour, but unless you want to know WHY it works, the HOW is pretty simple. Current flowing in a coil of wire around a closed-loop iron core stimulates a current in another coil of wire also wound around that core. It is linear with the number of coil turns, so if I want half the voltage and twice the current on the output, I will have half the loops around the core on the output side as I do on the input side. There is a lot of nuance and detail here, but the Square D company does that part, and I size the transformer for the loads. I have 30A-480V coming in, this is a (480V * 30A * 1.732 because 3-ph)/1000 = 25kVA, size up by 20% for safety, and you have a 30kVA transformer. Note it's not kiloWatts, but kiloVoltAmps, because reactive power, like motors, does NOT result in wattage equal to V*A, there is always a motor efficiency factor, the "power factor", which basically tells you how messed-up the voltage curves will be after the motor. If it kept perfect sine-waves, the power factor would be 1. It won't, often it's 80-95% for motors, depending on how many phases (3ph good, 1ph bad), how well the motor is made, and even things like the operating temperature. So I size a 30kVA transformer. There are (at least) two flavors, then, depending on what I need at the output. Because of the demand for a Neutral (to accommodate the 120V outlets), I can't use the simpler (and cheaper) delta-to-delta transformer, but must use a delta-to-wye transformer. The short explanation of that is the "delta" only has each wire referenced to each other wire, thus no common neutral. A "wye" has each wire referenced against a single point, the neutral. They look like the letters.

At this point, the needs are identified, the transformer is selected, and the loads are known (a lot of photos of the machine tools and their plugs were sent me, but those images do not belong to me). So, I make a schematic (Fig 19, out of order, sorry). From here on out, I will be referencing the figures and talking through the actions between them, I hope that is not excessively jumpy for those following along at home.

Fig1 - Transformer arrives! It's ~350lb, roughly a 2ft cube, give or take. Fig2-3 show the label and nameplate. Unbox, open to inspect as Fig4 shows. The guts of it is the coil package, and the X busbars are outputs to loads (X0 is neutral), the H busbars are inputs from the source. The small gray wires which shipped installed are what complete the "delta" circuit, taking H1-H2, H2-H3, and H3-H1, so that the required current in each looped iron core is established.

I separately ordered the outlets and breakers and enclosures and such, and really appreciated the pros at FactoryMation for calling about subbing a part within an hour of order to avoid a month of waiting. O McMaster-Carr, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways - all except pricing, where you only beat Grainger slightly sometimes, but oh well, you pay for what you get. Figs5-6 are the 120V outlet boxes being built, Fig7 shows the incoming disconnect switch (sized up, 60A, really only need 30A, but I like oversized switches).

Figs8-10 show the circuit breaker box being constructed on my bench, and Fig11 shows it installed and being short tested. Because I wanted to bag an item in the scavenger hunt, I actually put a video of the torque process up! I am a terrible videographer! You will see me being grumpy at my Phillips bit for jumping out of the screw head, and swapping to a wide flathead to complete the torque! It's not great art. Terminal torque is important, but especially for stranded copper wire. The first torquing does not hold, because the wire strands flow & relax, so you have to go over it again. For fine-stranded wire, like battery cable, a third time is good. 5ish minutes can make a substantial difference in the strength of the clamp.

Fig12 shows the compressor 50A outlet, Fig13 shows it installed adjacent to the breaker box, and Fig15 shows tinning the leads to the compressor. I should note that Fig13 is the physical embodiment of the schematic in Fig19 - it is never quite as clean as the drawing... Fig 14 shows the completed interior wiring, the X1-3-lines are pulled out to the DIN-rail blocks visible at top of Fig13, these are the three points of the "wye" output, and X0 is pulled to the neutral block for the 120V lines, in the lower left of the DIN-rail box (beside the first breakers on the bottom row), but X0 is also ganged to ground. This is the G-N bond required in any electrical service. Yours is probably in your main panel, and it allows unbalanced currents to spill to earth. Since 120V is inherently unbalanced - which is a silly Yankee affectation - your house panel is built betting that common loads on one phase balance the other, and it's only the difference of the two which is sent to ground.

Fig16 shows the test waveforms fed in, and Fig20 shows how they are fed, into each high leg on the input, with the low side of each test signal ganged, thus simulating at lower voltage what the transformer will see when plugged in. The result of this is a proportionally-lower output. So, if my "fake 480V" input is actually 3 waves of 24V peak-peak, I will read 8.3Vrms to ground on each line, and 14.6Vrms line-to-line. Thus, my scale factor is 32.9. Multiply my output readings by 32.9, and I get the prediction of what the outputs would be with real 480V inputs. All of those data went into a table lower down on the legal pad, but suffice it to say that all outputs were within spec given the test signal. My "120V" read out at 3.6Vrms, etc.

I'll pause here and mention that Fig 16 is the best visualization you are going to get to answer "what is 3-phase power?". There are three waveforms. Each one is the same, but they are shifted, like a 3-part round, so that wave 2 starts when wave 1 is 1/3rd of the way through, and wave 3 starts when wave 1 is 2/3 of the way through. Row, row, row your boat, each on a different "row", if you see what I mean. Most house power is single phase, which has only two parts to the round. The second wave starts when the first is halfway through, and thus the hill is opposite the valley.

Fig17 shows the completed load side with the labelled breakers in their box, Fig18 shows the input side, which also has a VFD controller for the 3-phase mill. In retrospect, I may not have needed that, but it should not cause harm.

This is essentially a temp-power solution for my colleagues, and as it's a startup, the facility might not be the forever facility, so I made the thing a cart, visible in Fig21, which has locking casters. The final weight is roughly 400lbs, so 4x 275lb casters gave me an OK safety factor. Ordinarily, I would want a safety factor of 3 for something like this, and the WLL tells me 2.4., except I am pretty sure that Ace Hardware's published working load limit on a caster already has a safety factor baked in, so I felt alright about it.

Then, crate it, ship it, work with the guys up there to vet it out, and get the tools turning!

This was a long post, congratulations to you, dear reader, for making it this far!

If I've omitted anything critical, or if you have any questions, I am happy to try to elaborate or correct it. It also crossed my mind that this was a sort of cottage-industry bit, as it was work done with my hands on my homestead for pay, but as it's my W2 job, I don't suspect that counts.

Happy homesteading!
Mark

I pulled a hedge trimmer out of the trash that didn’t work.  After replacing the plug with a salvaged one.  It works! I love trash picking.

Staff note (gir bot) : Someone flagged this submission as not complete.
BBV price: 1
Note: There's already a BB for that - https://permies.com/wiki/137726/pep-electricity/Put-extension-cord-PEP-BB


Quite right, I missed the “Or a tool has a damaged cord near the plug.” Sentence.