Jimbo's Electric Conversion

[HDNB]

so the voltage input on the left, you have two white wires?? electrical people like to keep colors the same.

The assumption is then:

the white wire on the far left is coming from the supply, it is 120vac to ground. let's call this one "black"

the white wire beside it is coming from the supply, it is 120vac to ground. let's call this one "red"

if you measure between these two wires you get 240 vac?

the red/black wires shown in the photo on the right go to the element?

[raketemensch]

and you should be using box ground on the keg, not neutral.

Well, the box ground comes from the ground bar in the sub-panel, no? I've basically got the ground from the ground bar going to what would be the neutral wire, since I only have/need a 3-wire plug. Then I've got that wire from the 3-wire dryer plug coming into my box as the ground, and it's connected to ground on the SCR, and continues out to ground on the keg.

so the voltage input on the left, you have two white wires?? electrical people like to keep colors the same.

It's a 3-wire dryer cord, they're all grey. The two on the outside are power, the middle is now ground, I dug around a bit to make sure that this was correct.

if you measure between these two wires you get 240 vac?

the red/black wires shown in the photo on the right go to the element?

Those are both correct.

[Monkeyman88]

Well, your crazy American wiring confuses me. Lol. I'm afraid I won't be much help from now.

[HDNB]

well then, i'd say just cause it came in a box, doesn't mean it works...either that or it's mis labled.

last test: does it trip out with no load (element) attached?


(Not really to do with your problem, but you asked):
you can use the neutral as a box ground if you are not using 120vac off the circuit anywhere, like the drawing posted shows an auxillary power plug wired in. the neutral is indeed a ground for 120vac purpose, and the box ground "covers" the neutral. on a single wire solution no big deal...just like the color of the wires... but if you were wiring lots of things together you may have voltage returning to ground on the neutral, which can have a voltage differential above your body's ground. hence the box ground, that "covers" the neutral and hot.

[still_stirrin]

I don't know whos drawing that is but its wired just like my drawing. You must have a crossed wire somewhere double check all your wiring good thing those things are cheap I hope you bought a spare

Hey guys, I'm late to the party here, but when I look at your wiring schematic Racketmensch, I see you've wired the ammeter parallel to your power to the element, which would be correct if it were a volt meter.

You've wired both the hot and return legs from the SCR output...Your ammeter should be in series with the hot (or return) legs...that is, the hot runs from the SCR to the ammeter and from the ammeter to the "hot" side of the element. Putting it like your figure shows would put full line voltage across the ammeter...which they are NOT designed to take.
ss

[raketemensch]

Hey guys, I'm late to the party here, but when I look at your wiring schematic Racketmensch, I see you've wired the ammeter parallel to your power to the element, which would be correct if it were a volt meter.

You've wired both the hot and return legs from the SCR output...Your ammeter should be in series with the hot (or return) legs...that is, the hot runs from the SCR to the ammeter and from the ammeter to the "hot" side of the element. Putting it like your figure shows would put full line voltage across the ammeter...which they are NOT designed to take.
ss

That wasn't my schematic, I was asking if Jimbo was referring to that one in his post :]

Mine's much simpler :]



I've since tried passing both red and black through the SCR, which was when it started to pop.

[Monkeyman88]

Maybe you just got a dud one. It should just plug and play pretty much.
Mine was. 240v in on terminal one. 240v to element on terminal three. Return from element to terminal four. Return from terminal two back to wall.

[raketemensch]

Maybe you just got a dud one. It should just plug and play pretty much.
Mine was. 240v in on terminal one. 240v to element on terminal three. Return from element to terminal four. Return from terminal two back to wall.

Well, you're from one of those crazy countries where you don't need two circuits for 240

[Jimbo]

This is the image I tried to link to. http://homedistiller.org/forum/download ... &mode=view

[Monkeyman88]

Yup. We keep things simple down here in NZ. Lol.

I think that may be your problem. Try leaving one 110v line out of the equation. You have 110v going in each side of the element. It needs to have power in one side and out the other.

Try it with just 110v

[still_stirrin]

This is the image I tried to link to. http://homedistiller.org/forum/download ... &mode=view

Hey Jimbo, those are volt meters, not ammeters. It would be correct indeed to connect them parallel to the loads as shown.

But I thought Racketmensch was using ammeter instead.

I guess the original question was referencing the SCR...which should connect like in your schematic.
ss

[HDNB]

i looked at about 80 pictures of scrs. All of them were AC in on the left, and AC out on the right, just like yours.

my vote goes to: i think you got a bum controller, unless you wired it some other way first and let the smoke out, your config as described should work.

maybe get an ohm meter on that element to make sure it's not shorted before you hook up the next one...lest you get the same experience.

[Swedish Pride]

I'm about to start putting together my control box, going to use a plastic lunch box as a housing.
The electricity will be pulled from the stove.

Just not sure about the ground part, was going to attach the ground the SCR, but I see others have their ground nut or block separate.
can I just use a spare bolt and nut and attach the ground to that?

this was my planed schema but may not cut the mustard

[HDNB]

from everything i read, the ssr requires grounding. (or at least should be grounded) i used a small bolt to hold the ssr onto the heatsink, and terminated to the bolt. mines in a metal box, so i added a ground to that too. and the keg.

consider a double pole kill switch on the incoming, i actually had to use mine once!

[Jimbo]

Swedish, looks good. Is your fan and pump 220? I guess youre in Europe?

Also, regarding grounding. Anything metal in the chain that you can touch should be grounded. Boiler, metal cage around the SSR if you have one like that etc.

[Swedish Pride]

grand grounding the heat sink as well as the skirt of the keg it is so, cheers lads.

Yep in Ireland, 230v, very handy when it comes to powertools, a fair bit of extra juice compared to 110v

[Jimbo]

Yep in Ireland, 230v, very handy when it comes to powertools, a fair bit of extra juice compared to 110v

Bet that extra torque is nice when driving a Corona mill off your drill....

[Swedish Pride]

it would but can't get any cracked corn here, just the flaked stuff in the feed stores here

[Jimbo]

Count your blessings. Cracked corn is bollocks

[Swedish Pride]

consider a double pole kill switch on the incoming, i actually had to use mine once!

good idea lad, never thought of that.

you'd want something beefy like this to be able to cope with the amp right?
http://www.diy.com/departments/nexus-1- ... 124_BQ.prd" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

[still_stirrin]

consider a double pole kill switch on the incoming, i actually had to use mine once!

good idea lad, never thought of that.

you'd want something beefy like this to be able to cope with the amp right?
http://www.diy.com/departments/nexus-1- ... 124_BQ.prd" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

'twood work....yep.

[raketemensch]

I was kinda reluctant to get started on the project this morning, being all frustrated from last weekend.

But I talked myself into reviewing the wiring one more time, and it just.... looks right. I couldn't figure out what to change, so just for the hell of it, I plugged it in. And it worked. I instantly heard the boiler start bubbling. Fores starting dripping in 32 minutes.

Sweet! But it's hot, and the fans were having trouble keeping up at that pace (the stream was huge), so I turned it down.... Nothing. Turned it all the way down.... Nothing. That sorta explains the pop I heard last weekend.

So I'm once again dead in the water until I get a new SCR. Blah. There's no way I can wait for one to ship from China at this point, I need to come up with a quicker solution. To the googler!

[HDNB]

mine's a bit different with an external pot, but the control is not linear. mine won't come on until the control is at about 60%, then it jumps on to 7+ amps....over the 40% sweep i have left it goes up to 21.8amps. when i turn down, if i go slow, i can get down to 3.8 amps at about 55% of the control, then it just turns off.

try turning it down real slooow.

oh yeah...and banging the whole box on the table helps too...

[raketemensch]

try turning it down real slooow.

oh yeah...and banging the whole box on the table helps too...

I gave that a shot, and the banging was therapeutic, but it runs full bore no matter what I do. I tried all combinations of fast up-slow down/slow up-fast down/slow up-slow down.... No dice.

Thanks for the idea, though, I've seen that work with other things before too.

Edit: Maybe I should try just replacing the potentiometer....

[FURTHER EDIT] I found one with Amazon Prime, it should be here Tuesday.

[FURTHER FURTHER EDIT] Still, even though I can't control it, it was cool to see it blasting away like that, 5500 watts is badass.

[rad14701]

I always have a plethora of electronics components kicking around... If you have a few random resistors kicking around, or can source one quick from junk electronics, you could diagnose whether the problem is the potentiometer or the SCR... Replace the potentiometer with a resistor and you should see a difference in performance... I won't get into the whole resistor value thing because you can google that... Multiple resistors in series will increase resistance... My money is on a fried (shorted) SCR...

[raketemensch]

I always have a plethora of electronics components kicking around... If you have a few random resistors kicking around, or can source one quick from junk electronics, you could diagnose whether the problem is the potentiometer or the SCR... Replace the potentiometer with a resistor and you should see a difference in performance... I won't get into the whole resistor value thing because you can google that... Multiple resistors in series will increase resistance... My money is on a fried (shorted) SCR...

The only resistors I have around are little 1k2 things. Most of the electronics work that I've done (of the resistor/breadboard type) has peaked at about 9v, doing it at 220 has me a little concerned.

So for the time being I've ordered another little Chinese unit, but over the winter I plan to build one out myself so that I get a better idea of how they work, as well as to have more flexibility in replacing burned-out bits.

[Jimbo]

At 20 bucks for the wholly self contained Chinese units buy a spare and spend your free time making hooch. I wired up 2 and use them both in parallel often, and they are still ticking. Its nice being able to boil 30 gallons of water pretty quick with 11000 watts. ComEd loves me

[HDNB]

the banging was therapeutic

I knew you would like the bench test.

Now it's my turn:

1/2 on topic...i did this conversion about a year ago. once during that year i ran on the old hotplate, because my SSR was jumping around all over the place mid- run and i didn't want to smear the shit out of the run so while still in heads, i turned on the old plate and finished the run with it.
the whiskey turned out excellent, better than the previous few, so i was looking at all the other options, grain bill, ferment time/size etc. etc.

today i got a late start so to get back on schedule, i heated up full smoke on the 5500W and put my 1500w hotplate under it to add heat get things going. i usually do spirit runs at 6.6 amps and so today, instead of shutting down the hotplate and going with the element, i did the opposite and ran on the hotplate instead.
the whiskey is amazing off the pipe. same ferment as last weeks spirit run. but the flavour is way different than run off the element.

so now i'm thinking the heat going all the way through from the bottom plate up is making a difference...is this insane?
does anyone else have both and could test?
the output speed was basically identical, the wort was finished last week below 1 and no lacto infection (this time for a change) set in. I can't say any difference other than the wort is a week older, and the heat came from a different place.
*i was mixing lowwines/fresh wort in same proportions to a 30%abv charge.

enquiring minds need to know...if anyone can test this theory let me know!

it will tell me if i am going to add a stirrer, or continue spirit runs on the plate!

[raketemensch]

What is this hotplate that you can put a full keg on?

[Jimbo]

What is this hotplate that you can put a full keg on?

ha, I was wonderin the same thing