• Scam Alert. Members are reminded to NOT send money to buy anything. Don't buy things remote and have it shipped - go get it yourself, pay in person, and take your equipment with you. Scammers have burned people on this forum. Urgency, secrecy, excuses, selling for friend, newish members, FUD, are RED FLAGS. A video conference call is not adequate assurance. Face to face interactions are required. Please report suspicions to the forum admins. Stay Safe - anyone can get scammed.

Electrical suppliers - Calgary

cuslog

cuslog

Super User
Premium Member
Looking at building my own rotary phase converter, watching YouTube vids (sbirdranch). Where would you go for supplies like enclosure, motor starter, start cap, run cap. etc ?
TIA
 
B&E Electronics has a reasonable selection of enclosures, if you can tolerate the "this isn't my chosen career" attitude of some of their staff. They can be downright snotty.

A lot of the run and start caps are available online quite readily on Amazon, but also try furnace and air conditioning supply houses. Some won't sell to you unless you have a ticket, but Lennox on 86 Av SE is great. The staff are helpful too, which is why I like their products. I can always get parts. Most start and run caps have some leeway with respect to mF ratings, just watch voltage.

I'll let others chime in as my knowledge is mostly at the electronics level, as opposed to motors. I'm sure motor repair shops have parts available locally Howard.

Best of luck.
 
Yep, Amazon was the first place I tried and first cap I searched seems not so common - 3-4 weeks away (Amazon) - I was hoping to get things moving along a bit sooner than that. So it looks like some Amazon (the more common items), some local sourcing.
 
Kristian Electric is another supplier that I find useful for industrial electronics. Try Kijiji for used enclosures, as a large enclosure can be big $$$ for a homebuilt.
 
Thanks guys - good leads. Being relatively new to the big city sometimes just don't know who the good suppliers are.
 
A lot of the Grainger stuff is from the American site. But the part numbers often transfer and they are usually pretty good at getting the stuff here locally of you don't want to set up an account and order online from them directly.
 
The other place to look is Kijiji I found a fellow in Nisku that sells surplus electrical supplies for about 20 cents on the dollar, he had a Kijiji add. I also bought a transformer and brand new motor off of Kijiji. It took six months of scouring the tools and business and industrial adds to get everything. Contactors, relays and switches were sourced from Alibaba or or AliExpress. Oh and the caps came from Grainger.
 
RobinHood said:
Have you made any progress on your RPC?

Sending you a PM.
Click to expand...

It is basically done. I ran into an issue with the voltage creeping up to 500V when I would shut my mill off to change tooling or make adjustments and leave the RPC running. I wouldn't have been worried but the motor on the mill is rated for 400V. I solved the issued by adding a 3/4 hp motor to the 440V circuit. I now have 440/440/436 with the mill off and 420/420/415 under load. I just have to permanently mount the motor and redo the connections.
 
Hacker said:
It is basically done. I ran into an issue with the voltage creeping up to 500V when I would shut my mill off to change tooling or make adjustments and leave the RPC running. I wouldn't have been worried but the motor on the mill is rated for 400V. I solved the issued by adding a 3/4 hp motor to the 440V circuit. I now have 440/440/436 with the mill off and 420/420/415 under load. I just have to permanently mount the motor and redo the connections.
Click to expand...

Glad that you have it worked out @Hacker. Good trick with the 3/4 hp extra load - very clever!

I was wondering if @cuslog , the OP, has made any progress.
 
Thanks, Yes, up and running now.
I "chickened out" on building one. Looking into it, it started looking like I was going to have to source parts from several different suppliers and some parts were ~ a month away. Decided I just wanted to "get on with it" (I'd been without a lathe for over a year).
I bought a used 15hp motor from Tom K. and a RPC panel from Phase-Quest (15hp). Seems to be working well. Nice to have a lathe again !
 
RobinHood said:
Glad that you have it worked out @Hacker. Good trick with the 3/4 hp extra load - very clever!

I was wondering if @cuslog , the OP, has made any progress.
Click to expand...

Thanks. It was the cheapest and easiest way that I could figure out, a used motor cost me $25. I looked at using relays to switch the capacitors in and out but that was going to cost at least $50 and I would have to wait for it to come from China.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top