I know this has been addressed before, but I cant find it.
I just bought a new PM jointer with a 1.5 hp Baldor motor. The carton said wired for 115v and the motor says 115v or 230v.
I have two questions:
1. Is it worth it to spend a couple of hours to string cable and rewire for 230v?
2. Can anybody make sense of what I have listed below? I have wired switches and motors before but the wiring instructions that came with the jointer were for a different motor so they are not much help, and the way it is wired doesn’t make sense to me.
On the motor, a diagram appears as such:
I am assuming L1 and L2 are the leads from the switch, and the motor wires are numbered as 1(blue), 2 white, 3 orange, 4 yellow, 5 black, 8 red.
Low voltage: L1—–1—–3——8
L2——4—–5——2
High Voltage: L1——1
L2——4——-5
3——-8——-2
The switch has terminals on each side of the white and black connections.
Inside the motor box the white lead from the switch is connected to 1 (blue).
The black lead from the switch is connected to 4 (yellow), and 8(red).
The 5 (black), 2 (white), and 3(orange) wires in the motor are connected.
Of course a ground is connected to the housing.
The motor seems to run correctly when connected to 115v, but doesn’t seem to follow the diagram on the motor.
How would this be wired for 220?
I know some will say leave this to the professionals etc, but it doesn’t seem like a brand new expensive tool should be this hard to deal with, and I can imagine this would drive an electrician nuts as well.
Any comments?
thanks,
Stevo
Replies
Stevo
I have done this several times, but to read it and then tell you how is another question.
Your diagram for the high voltage seems right. It means that those wires are connected together on the terminal. If you follow this it should work fine. I have missed wired it and have not suffered any effects, other than it won't run. Be prepared to turn it off if it just hums etc.
The use of 220 vs 110 I will not get into. You might try the 110 to see how it works. I will probably get corrected here, but I believe you will have greater power with the 220. If you use the jointer to flaten boards which requires a lot of knife and wood surface, you might want the 220, for edge jointing the 110 will work fine. I have my jointer, planer and table saw on 220. Had my radial arm saw on 220 but changed it back when I ran out of 220 outlets. I did not see any difference with it, but it just collects dust anyway.
Remember when you install a 220 circuit from your fuse/breaker panel you need to stay above a certain place to use 220. Usually its the top half of the box. It is usually marked on the breaker panel I have been told why, but it tends to blow right over my head, I just know it does and leave it at that. It has something to do with the way alternating current flows, boy I am over my head on the why!
Good luck. I hope this gives you some help.
Curt
Stevo - Personally, I wouldn't mess with the rewiring. Were it a larger motor, yes. But with 1.5hp there is not all that much to be gained. Baldor is a good brand of motors, by the way.
PlaneWood by Mike_in_Katy
PlaneWood
Steve. Unless you'll be using the jointer on a daily basis there is really no reason to rewire for 220. The 220 mode would save you some pennies in electric costs. I said pennies for the occasional user. The reason here is the meter reads peak from both legs of the box. In the case of 110 the meter would read lets say 15 amps during the operation of the jointer. Using 220 it would read maybe 10 on each leg or in effect 10 altogether. But like i said only if you use the jointer a lot would such a thing matter.
2 points:
1. For all practical purposes, the main economic advantage to going to 220 is the minor gain in lower resistive loss in the shop wiring. 110 at say 15 amps has higher resistive loss that 220 v running at 7.5 amp. The meter will read either case as the same total power (ignoring the difference in losses). Yes, the motors usually start a little more efficiently on 220, and can run cooler because the lower losses on a 220 line result in less voltage loss too.
2. There is another issue, and Joey hinted at it. Running on 220 "balances" the load on both legs of the power into your shop. 110 only uses one leg. Say, for example, you have your dust collector (or compressor, lights, or whatever) also on 110. Unless you plan carefully, you could have many loads running on the same 110 leg at the same time, possibly overloading the breaker feeding your shop. You can overcome this simply by making sure that simultaneous loads are connected in a balanced fashion. You should be able to tell which 110 circuits are on which leg by looking at the breakers.
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