Motor Conversion Test Rig

[FishbonzWV]

Hi all,

It's been about a year since I've been able to devote any time to RE work. Life just got too complicated but everything has eased up now.

I just completed my third motor conversion, a little 1/2 hp, 3 ph, 6 pole motor with some hard drive mags I had laying around. I started to rig up some meters to see what it would do and got tired of sorting out jumper clips and meter leads and decided to build a testing box.

It started out as a simple 3 phase rectifier and an ammeter and then I got carried away. I had all this stuff laying around so I put it all together.

The AC section is on the right, DC on the left.

Three phase input comes in on the bottom right tabs of the terminal strip and is rectified using either a single 3 phase rectifier or can be hooked to the individual rectifiers to test as Jerry rigged.

Rectifiers, terminal strip and fuse are mounted on a large heat sink.

Voltage monitoring is by the bottom right DMM, amperage is by the top right analog ammeter.

DC output is on the bottom left tabs of the terminal strip and is monitored on the left side in the same way.

The negative output is fused before going to the analog DC ammeter.

Then I got carried away and thought I would make it self contained with a battery inside.

Then! I figured it would need a dump load when the battery was full, along with another fuse and dump load indicator (red lens on the top of the box). Now I have to order one of Ghurds kits to finish it up.

The dump load is made of 8, 30 ohm, 50 watt resistors paralleled together.

So this is what I ended up with.

So now all I have to do is plug in the leads from the motor conversion and turn on the DMM's and spin the motor in the lathe.

I can see all the data at once. Sweet!

Fishbonz

[Jerry]

Hey Fish.

You are very right "SWEET". Thats my kinda setup. Now can't wait to see it in action.

Did you do any wireing mods to the 6 pole 3 phase motor?

A few picturs of the motor would be great.

OK you got my attension. I'll be checking the board hourlyLOL.

Thanks for the share.

                         JK TAS Jerry

[FishbonzWV]

Hey Jerry,

Hope you got the store fully back in action and can get back to a little R&D in RE.

That's what this box is really for. I was following the Capacitor talk on the backshed site and wondered if it would work for conversions.

The little 6 pole has a delta/wye connection so that's all I've changed on it.

I was able to borrow a tach over the weekend so now I know what the speeds are on my hobby lathe. I can now tell where cut in is on the motors.

Too much fun

Bonz

[Ungrounded Lightning Rod]

I'd have put the resistor heatsink on the outside of the box and with the fins vertical.  But putting it inside just limits the time you can run the dummy load.

Nice.

[Airstream]

With all the goings-on of stuff spinning on temporary mounts, tools and other paraphernalia on a busy test bench I like the 'out-of-direct-sight' electrics being under cover; yet it looks like there is no reason the back cover is not reversible if a strategic notch was added for the wire in the box and lid...

[FishbonzWV]

Here's a couple shots of the little one.

It's a sacrificial lamb for testing some theories for reduction in iron loss and lowering XI

The rotor with hard drive mags.

[FishbonzWV]

Yes I thought about that, but run time is usually less than a minute.

If if gets warm I can just lower the back door.

I hooked it up directly to the battery and it draws 3.4 amps and took about 15 minutes to get the heat sink warm.