24" Planer failing to start on 20 HP RPC

[scsmith42]

Lots of good advice from others in this thread.

I used to have a similar problem to what you're experiencing when I tried to start a 37" wide belt sander off of a 30hp Phase-a-matic RPC.

The sander would spin up around 60% or so, and then a relay would kick out (magnetic starter?) and it would slow back down to a stop.

My solution was quite simple.... I kept my thumb hovering over the start button, and as soon as the relay kicked out I'd hit the start button again. If I was fast enough (and the machine had not wound most of the way back down), the machine would spin up the rest of the way and I could use it w/o a problem.

I ran it for over 10 years that way - probably put several hundred operating hours on the machine during that time.

 

[JoinerCP]

Lots of good advice from others in this thread.

I used to have a similar problem to what you're experiencing when I tried to start a 37" wide belt sander off of a 30hp Phase-a-matic RPC.

The sander would spin up around 60% or so, and then a relay would kick out (magnetic starter?) and it would slow back down to a stop.

My solution was quite simple.... I kept my thumb hovering over the start button, and as soon as the relay kicked out I'd hit the start button again. If I was fast enough (and the machine had not wound most of the way back down), the machine would spin up the rest of the way and I could use it w/o a problem.

I ran it for over 10 years that way - probably put several hundred operating hours on the machine during that time.

Appreciate the input. If I were working with something that had easily replaceable components, I might consider that 'hack' as a solution but I'm too afraid of burning up the control board. I'm more strongly considering trying to find a motor guy to rewind my motors to 240V at some point. Right now, I'm working on upgrading my entire set-up so I'm going to upgrade my RPC and rewire everything so it's 'real proper like'.

 

[scsmith42]

Nothing wrong with doing it the right way. I don't think that you'd have any control panel concerns though unless you were seeing significant voltage drop at the machine during start up.

I run all of my bigger equipment off of a 400hp 480VAC generator, and the smaller stuff off of the 30hp RPC. That keeps me from having to run the generator for a relatively small load. With the old WBS, it would run fine off of the RPC once it was spun up; my problem was the current inrush caused a slight voltage drop, which extended the spin-up time by a few seconds. That was causing the start relays to trip. I never had a problem with it starting off of the generator though.

When i replaced the 37" WBS with a 52" three-head machine, that necessitated the generator no matter what. The new machine is 100hp and 480VAC.

Best of success to you.

 

[JoinerCP]

Nothing wrong with doing it the right way. I don't think that you'd have any control panel concerns though unless you were seeing significant voltage drop at the machine during start up.

I run all of my bigger equipment off of a 400hp 480VAC generator, and the smaller stuff off of the 30hp RPC. That keeps me from having to run the generator for a relatively small load. With the old WBS, it would run fine off of the RPC once it was spun up; my problem was the current inrush caused a slight voltage drop, which extended the spin-up time by a few seconds. That was causing the start relays to trip. I never had a problem with it starting off of the generator though.

When i replaced the 37" WBS with a 52" three-head machine, that necessitated the generator no matter what. The new machine is 100hp and 480VAC.

Best of success to you.

Thanks for the info, it helps add further clarity to how things can play out with these set-ups. Is your generator one of those military gen sets? An electrician/friend was trying to get me to go in that direction but it's too costly for my situation and the fact that I don't need mobile power at all. Even though I have zero need, the idea of generating your own power is fun. I don't have plans to add a WBS but it's good to know what the upper cap is on some of this machinery. I don't think any of my future additions will beat my current planer. 20A on 480, 40A - 240v.

 

[scsmith42]

My generator is not military surplus; it’s an older Kohler with a Cummins Big Cam 400 engine. It had 903 hours on it when I bought it. At that time, 480 3 phase was not available adjacent to my farm (it is today), and it was going to cost a lot of $ to bring it in. The used generator was about 1/5 of the capitol cost of bringing in line power. Even though it cost me more per KWH to operate than line power, I’m still head.

Unless you buy a commercial model that was sold to the military, most of the military surplus units are difficult to get parts for.