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Hi all,
I have a customer who has bought at great expense a machine directly from a Chinese supplier for a specialist mushroom cultivation task and he has asked me to install.
I have identified immediately some pretty serious safety issues that need to be addressed but skipping over those for now, my main interest atm is the way the main, pretty huge single phase motor has been configured.
I have attached a drawing of the way I would expect a single phase motor with start and run capacitors to be set up and the way this one has been supplied.
Motors are not my field of expertise but I am familiar with the basics and have not seen one configured this way before so am seeking some reassurance that it is valid. The supplier sent a video of the machine working, (rigged up in a workshop in a lashed up style) but so far I haven't tried to run it. What do you think?
Thanks John
 

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Thanks, pretty sure that diagram is the same as my standard setup, I know and understand that that will work. The 'our setup' is how the motor is wired from the factory and does not look like it will work, it may however have been wired differently to the 6 terminal box ( U, V & Z ) I haven't been there to test only relying on photos, I'm reluctant to energise it as supplied and was hoping somebody might recognise an 'alternative' config for 'some' motors
 
Thanks, pretty sure that diagram is the same as my standard setup, I know and understand that that will work. The 'our setup' is how the motor is wired from the factory and does not look like it will work, it may however have been wired differently to the 6 terminal box ( U, V & Z ) I haven't been there to test only relying on photos, I'm reluctant to energise it as supplied and was hoping somebody might recognise an 'alternative' config for 'some' motors
Your standard setup doesn't show any difference between 'forward' and 'reverse', did you intend to label eg the main winding terminations the other way round in the reverse version?
The reason I mention it, is that clearly the manufacturers 'our setup' is not going to reverse the motor by swapping L and N over! If reverse is a required feature, and the machine has been shown to work, there must be more to this than meets the eye.

Also I don't understand the purpose of the capacitor that is between L and N while the start switch is closed, with apparently nothing in series with it!

I've come across an alternative approach to reversing, see below (not saying this is necessarily relevant to your situation/motor) - just something to look out for!

IMG_0941.jpeg
 
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in the forward and reverse standard drawing the polarity is reversed on the main winding. Tbh I'm more concerned with the 'our setup' case. You are right there is more than meets the eye but I didn't want to confuse things, there is a reversing contactor arrangement with a 4 wire connection to the motor but I have shown on the drawing which terminals are supplied with L and N in each state.
I am now starting to wonder if the 6 terminals are not internally wired as one might expect (U1 & U2 main winding Z1 & Z2 start winding and V1 &V2 switch)
When I get time I will draw out the exact setup as supplied.
There are so many things wrong with the machine, (no earthing at all, no interlocks on reversing contactors, no motor overload, no proper start stop or em stops etc) that I have to also sort out but I was just trying to get to grips with how the motor is configued first because it seems so wrong!
 
the drawing shows the contactor arrangement, the control just energises 1 or the other for forward or reverse, the pic shows the wires 1-4 connected to their respective terminal, I just turned all of that into the 2 diagrams
 

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In the OP's standard set up, there's a mistake, in that forward and reverse are identical. Either U1 and U2 or V1 and V2 need to be swapped around to reverse the motor.
The 'as supplied' diagrams are clearly nonsense. Swapping live and neutral won't do anything, and the run capacitor is simply connected directly across the supply in the start phase, also doing nothing.
 
In the OP's standard set up, there's a mistake, in that forward and reverse are identical. Either U1 and U2 or V1 and V2 need to be swapped around to reverse the motor.
The 'as supplied' diagrams are clearly nonsense. Swapping live and neutral won't do anything, and the run capacitor is simply connected directly across the supply in the start phase, also doing nothing.
U1 & U2 are reversed in my standard diagrams
 
I was working from this diagram as a 'standard' setup, however this is shown with links in the terminal box so that the motor is set to be either in permanent forward or reverse depending on link config, I was trying to show in my original diagram in post #1 what I would expect it to look like on the actual machine with the 4 wire and contactor arrangement in post #6 and what it actually is from interpreting the contactor arrangement and wiring of terminals in those images
 

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in the forward and reverse standard drawing the polarity is reversed on the main winding.
Apologies. I didn't initially spot that although windings are shown in the same place with the same nomenclature, the wiring is different in both forward and reverse diagrams. All good!
 
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