Might have a use for this

Darren Wright

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Springfield, Missouri
When our house was built, it was outside the city limits and on a septic system. Since, the city has grown and the house connect to the sewer system. As part of my Family room remodel I'm taking care of some electrical issues and cleaning up the main panel. One was to remove the old relay box for the septic tank grinder. I'm thinking this has the parts/makings for a dust collection relay system. :)

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A few updates to the DC switch. For testing I simply added a plug and outlet to the enclosure. I've stripped some of the old components out and have cut and installed external switches and LEDs.

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The spaghetti mess of wires inside and breadboard components will be moved to a pcb once I've tested things out. There is the main power/safety switch, which will kill power to both the controller and to the DC outlet. The yellow button won't be used as a button, just using it's light as a dust bin alert for when it's getting full. The red button is the run indicator light and the manual run switch.

I plan to mount the controller by the main panel, then will run dedicated power to the box and DC after things have tested out. The old components in the box may or may not get used, will have to see how it all works without any of it.

Here's an example of the dust bin sensor working.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxOG0cJzeLI
 
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I want to see the "Manual Overide" toggle launch a sewer rocket for zombies!! Sorry...long day (week) in a RPIW...want results!!
 
Well, disappointment galore. :p Ran fine when controlling smaller motors (drill and router), but fizzled two 25 amp SSR's with the DC connected. When the LED's went out, it didn't shut off, checked the SSR's with the meter and both were shorted closed. So next is to try either a 40 or 100 amp SSR's or to simply use the mechanical relay in conjunction with a SSR.
 
I've got a new amp meter and line splitter that brown will be dropping off later today, so will check to see just what the startup amps are tonight. Got another SSR on order that should be here by the weekend, may just go ahead and use that mechanical relay anyway.
 
Brown stopped by today. :woohoo:

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The new amp meter has a "Max" setting that will record the peak amperage pulled on a circuit. I used that to check the DC's start up amperage. Over about 10 cold starts it averaged about 80 amps each time :eek: then leveled out to 12.5 at full load. As someone else mentioned the only true way to know the peak would be to hook it up to a scope, but don't have one. Someone else also mentioned the fact that a full load on the SSR even with a heat sink will probably have a short life due to heat build up. So I'm leaning towards using the SSR to run the mechanical relay instead. I hooked up the mechanical relay tonight to verify it worked and also checked it's peak amperage, which only came out to about .5 amps, so feeling good about going that route.
 
Success at last...

I got the 25 amp SSR interconnected to run the mechanical relay. Had to do a little bit of spaghetti wiring to patch things together, but this is only a test unit and will be re-wiring the whole thing later.
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And here is the first test run of the manual switch with the DC connected, bonus is I can hear the relay kick in with this setup. I reprogrammed the button to wait 5 seconds before shutdown (which is when it's flashing).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpZuBvriuKc

I had the bin sensor sitting inside the enclosure, so that is why the yellow light is on constantly.
 
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