Member postings for ChrisH

Just to complete - tested all motor phases for resistence, all equal, no shorting across to another phase or to earth,

Will bite the bullet and order a new inverter - ouch!

Chris

Will check tomorrow the phase resistences as suggested before ordering a new inverter.

Think Clive's explanation has merit as to what happened.

Thank you all for your input and confirmationary thoughts - much appreciated.

Chris

Edited By ChrisH on 30/03/2023 22:18:58

My lathe is powered by a 1.5kW 3 ph Tec motor driven by a Telemecanique Altivar 28 inverter off a single phase supply. Today, machining happily away, stopped the lathe to check a diameter dimension, on restarting there was a loud pop from the direction of the inverter and nothing else happened. Lathe immobile. The inverter displayed a fault code that said the fault was over current. Reset and tried again, same result. Thinking there was a blockage stopping the motor turning over, turned the chuck by hand, turned over easily, so reset the inverter and tried again. This time the fault code said the fault was an open phase.

So, checked all connections, all tight. Motor obviously connected in delta and tested all winding connections for continunity, all good and no leakage to earth. Disconnected motor cables at inverter, tested each one for continunity between inverter and motor, all good. Tried starting the inverter with motor cables disconnected and same fault code displayed - open phase.

Now I am no electrician and don't know where to go next - hence this post!

To me, rightly or wrongly, I think the motor and cables are OK and I have a fault in the inverter but I am happy to be corrected. If so, its a new inverter I guess, a repair would not be economic I would imagine. If not it has to be the motor, and same logic I guess applies.

Anyone able to offer an opinion on this please?

Chris

Edited By ChrisH on 30/03/2023 18:34:46

Edited By ChrisH on 30/03/2023 18:43:47

John Doe 2 - the point I was making there was that they had developed all this clever stuff, really clever stuff, I can't even really comprehend how clever the design and engineering is to achieve it all, getting the damn thing up into space, sending it to wherever, talking and directiing it all the way there and back - and then when they have it back in the Earth's atmosphere they just dunk it in the ocean, like we can't be bothered to design some really clever solution to getting it to come down exactly where we want on some space airfield or whatever. It's like not a complete job being done.

Cost effective it may be - though how much does the pick up ship etc cost to get it back to dry land, but not the most convienent and complete solution surely?

Chris

Edited By ChrisH on 20/01/2023 22:47:31

The latest edition of MEW No.324 has a one page article on the Artemis 1 Lunar Mission with NASA's Orion spacecraft.

When you sit and think of all the work involved in the mission, designing, building, proving and then sending the spacecraft out and bringing it back so successfully, and what the mission involved, what a stunning achievement and what brilliant feat of engineering that was.

Not exactly model engineering in the workshop perhaps, but very grateful and pleased that such an article was included in MEW.

The only thing that amuses me, for want of a better phrase, is that at the conclusion of the mission, after all that technical expertise so briliiantly demonstrated, what happens at the very end is that the spacecraft still just splashes down into the ocean by parachute.

Talk about a basic anticlimax end to the misssion! Like they haven't got round to thinking about that bit yet, not changed in 60 odd years; I guess they will get round to improving/updating that in due course.

Chris

A 'heads-up' for yet another scam.

Today so far we have had three calls on our land line, apparently from "banking security", an electronic type message as such, saying we have pending a £300 payment to Amazon and a £1100 international funds transfer, press 1 to pay or press 2 to cancel.

The whole message shouted SCAM at me, but after the second message I contacted my bank to ensure that all was well. The banks' fraud department checked all accounts and cards and confirmed there were no 'flags' raised and that all was well.

The fraud dept. also said that the bank would NEVER send a message saying press 1 to pay etc. and that they would never contact us in that way either - which is what we thought anyway.

Interestingly, only one of the three calls had a "withheld number" status - the other two were from 02045 203908. This number is being forwarded to the banks' security for checking out and we were given the email address [email protected] to which we could send further telephone numbers if we were bothered again. Presumably other banks will have a similar email address available

Hope this is of help to forum members,

Chris

My wife and I will be 76 in May and last week we got the reminder to renew.

Included in the envelope was a return envelope to the DVLA at Swansea, right postcode, should be wish to to renew by post, for which a form was also included, but also included was a page advising to renew on-line, which we did, and were told our new licence would arrive within a week. We shall see! The return envelope was used to return the old driving licence, saving the pair of us two envelopes and a stamp - every little helps they say.

Renewing online was easy and straightforward, the main things was to get some details together before starting - passport number, NI number and driving licence number and working out how long we had lived here. Having these to hand first made the process painless. We had no medical issues to slow things down either.

Chris

Yes Andy - I was working on ships all through the 1970's, as you say, a short handled hammer was extremely useful in many on-board situations where a 'normal' hammer would not be useful at all.

Chris

David - glad to hear I am not the only one who has cut a hammer shaft down. I also have a 2lb - or perhaps it is a 13/4 lb, not sure now - that I have had since about 1974, which I soon cut down on the handle length. Standard length was far too long, the shorter handle made it much easier and better to use, it has been my favourite go-to hammer ever since!

Chris

Does this forum have to only discussions of subjects that deal with metal engineering?

I ask because malipuation of tomato seeds could fall into a generic engineering category; as such it's an excellent subject for home workshop engineers who also have an interest in gardening and growing.

I see no problem with this thread at all, but thats just my view - others may differ, but sad on them!

Love the way he puts his foot against the mould then pours the molten metal into the hole but towards his foot - one miss and he's got a very poorly foot. Enough to give our ElfnSafety mob a heart attack.

Malcolm - contact Inverter Supermarket and pick their brains, they were very helpful to me when I went down this route, supplied both motor and inverter.

Chris

Last train to San Fernando

If I had a hammer.....

Sailing

We also had a power cut last Friday here in the South-West, but only for about six and a half hours. We managed as we have a gas fire in the lounge and a single ring camping gas stove for heating food/water for tea, plus the electric Aga takes ages to cool down so we made use of the oven in that whilst it was still warm.

However, two doors up there was a young family (two young children) whose power cable had come down on the Friday. The cable was made safe on the day but wasn't renewed until the following Monday evening, after which one of the engineers called at our house to see if we were ok as he could see no lights in our house from the road. Interesting talking to him, they had already put over 580,000 properties back online with more to do, their repair team hadn't been home since Friday, they were just working all hours then sleeping in their vans, they had taken on over 1000 temporary staff to help cope - and, incredibly to my mind, had received no end of abuse. Why for goodness sake, they are trying to fix it, they didn't cause it. There are some mindless morons out there.

What we couldn't do with the power down was make a phone call - our landline phones are modern digital pick up and walk around the house jobs and the mobiles lost all signal. It was suggested we get an old analogue phone, which we now have, which will work in a power cut they tell me. Now I read BT in their infinite wisdom will make that useless in a couple of years by turning all landlines into digital; progress isn't always a good thing. That is really encouraging for the elderly vulnerable living in the sticks. Does nobody ever think these things all the way through?

One the subject of boiler heating hot water but not the heating circuit, we have twice in the past few months have our combi boiler lock out due to the overtemp cut-out within the boiler case actuating. It is situated right over the silly three port valve which had stuck in teh hot water position. I think what must have happened is that the heating system repeatedly called for heat, the boiler tried to respond but being stuck in HW mode just ended up overheating itself. Both times it cleared by me manually operating the valve as described above by Nigel B and away it went again, though I admit that the last time I did spray electrical contact cleaner around in a hope that if it was just a manual sticking of the vavle. Note to self, must get a replacement motor unit - only £15 in Toolstation it is claimed!!

Chris.

Lee - you could try High Performance Setcrete Levelling Compound, sold at Wicks. Flows to a depth of 2-15mm(so won't raise the surface level by much) and will take a heavy load - I was going to put a 300kg Aga on it until I found our floor was level enough. You will also need the Setcrete primer under to make sure it sticks to the concrete.

Just a suggestion,

Chris

No worries Iain, I just picked up on your comment that it was brand new, if its brand new and there is a problem the supplier should provide an answer, means, or action, (or all three!) in my book to fix it.

Chris

Iain - just asking the obvious, what do Warco say?

Chris

I have no problem with the realisation that we cannot go on with energy from coal and gas and oil, but this headlong dash into electic everything just has not been thought through.

We have known for years electrical generation would need some power stations to be 'retired' and replaced and more to be built/added to increase capacity, but governments of all hues have ignored this, pretending it didn't exist or if it did, then there was no urgency to address the problem.

Fine, switch to electric by all means, but make provision so the transfer is smooth, well planned, maintains capacity, allows for increased capacity needs, is cost effective, maintains control within the country and not at the whim of foreign governments, and is affordable first.

It makes no sense either, when we are sitting on loads of NorthSea gas (and oil?) and shale gas, not to use thatwhich is readily available first while we transfer, get a bit of energy independance under us as a country, until we can proceed in an orderly fashion, but no, lets all bow down to the green lobby instead and freeze.

We are told that cars must all go electric, that oil and gas cannot heat our home any more, so again we must use more electric, but where is all this electric going to come from? And how is it going to reach our homes, the distribution system is also surely in need of upgrading to cope with the increased demand? And how is the average family on average incomes going to afford all this change? I for one cannot afford a new electric car or a heat pump and neither would I want noisy heat pump fans clattering along all the while.

We have seen during that past month the frailities of relying on renewables when the sun doesn't shine on endless grey days and the wind doesn't blow either, the effect it has on capacity to meet demand; thank God it wasn't freezing cold as well. The only good news at the moment is that Rolls Royce have got a contract for a load of small nuclear power generators to come on stream in the next few years, but in itself that will not be enough

I suppose someone somewhere knows what they are doing, but I'm not holding my breath!

Chris

I agree re usng mobile phnes whilst driving - should be banned. If you want to make or receive a call, pull over and stop the car. Safest way.

Have thought so ever since about 25 years ago a director of the company I worked for was reputedly known to have driven around a roundabout phone in one hand, changing gear with the other and steering using her knee. Nightmare!

+1 again for a small bandsaw.

My shed, being very small and of limited available space, determined that I bought a very small version of a 6x4, not on a stand on wheels, and reasonably lightweight, so I could easily lift it. Lives under the end of the bench and comes out to play only when needed so doesn't take up valuable shed space.

Axminster were doing them at the time, not the cheapest available from then but good quality, then it was discontinued and now the rough equivalent has been re-introduced but at a much greater cost. Nothing new there then!

However, I find it's worth it's weight in gold, a very valued tool, how I lived without it I don't know sort of thought comes to mind, especially so as I hate hacksawing, absolutely hate it, and cannot cut as straight and true and so effortlessly as my bandsaw. Would not be without it now even if it does unfortunatly not get used as much as I would like due to shed-time constraints. Just my tuppence worth.

Chris