She Runs!
RPC is up and running. I finished the wiring Saturday and mounted it to the wall. All that was left was to connect the motor and connect it to the main panel. Moving the motor in place was no small task! That is one big motor. I rested it on a one of puzzle mats I had. I could slide it then but once I got this far I ran out of steam.
I still need to build a guard for the the motor shaft. But I have great idea. Since this is a c-face motor I can just cut a round piece of ply, cut a hole in the center and insert a piece of PVC with a cap on it. Then bolt it to the face of the motor. Simple and cheap.
Today it's raining so I got to work on the RPC this morning. Got everything connected. Turn on the breaker and no sparks or Ozone. I hit the start button... nothing. Not a sound. Quick look around and I see the problem. I connected the line to the wrong side of the relay so there is no power to the start button/circuit.
Move the wire and hit the button. There is loud thump as the relays trigger, the idler motor starts spinning and comes up the speed and then suddenly there is moderately loud vibrating sound. I tried it a couple of times and it only happened when the motor hit speed so that narrowed it down. I fired it up and quick touched each relay with a screwdriver and found the one that was vibrating. Checked my diagrams and I had a wire on the potential relay connected to the wrong terminal. Moved that tried it again. Motor just hummed.
Stop to think a minute and had an idea. I started the motor spinning with my foot, hit start and away we went. We have a working RPC. I remember that Bruce said I probably needed to add more start caps for this bigger motor and that was it.
I have not checked the voltages yet or tried to balance it out. Just happy to see it run. Time for lunch and then I will check my output and see what I am up against.
I had planned to add remote start switches in at least a couple of places around the shop just for convenience. After hearing how quite that idler motor is I am going to have make sure they have run lights or add them to the circuit! That motor is so quite that after a few minutes it's just going to be background noise that I will not notice and I will leave it running.