Grizzly GO566 up and running - long

[t peterson]

Geez, I'm mightly embarassed to make this post. I incorrectly wired the plug. I posted a message on Friday that I was having trouble getting my new 21" Grizzly BS to operate. The post generated a lot of dialogue and eventually the CEO of Grizzly stepped in and assurred me the company would work with me until the problem was solved. Allow me to outline what led to the problem and how it was resolved.

How I got there: I purchased a 20' whip and a 50 AMP angle plug for this machine so I could use the same outlet I use for my PM66. I carefully read the instructions for wiring and it said...when stripping the wires make the white one longer and connect to the flat neutral blade at the base of the Y. Just to make sure I was on track I took the back off the plug of the PM66 and sure enough the white wire was at the base of the Y. Wired the new plug the same way connected the wires to the BS (B-B, W-W, G to Ground). Turned the saw on and the results led to my original post.

How it was resloved: The gentleman that Mr. Balolia put on this problem called me within minutes of Mr. Balolia's post that Friday. We talked at length during several phone calls about possible solutions to the problem. Never, I repeat never, did he treat me like I was some novice fool woodworker. He was focused on helping me solve the problem and making it right. During the course of one of our conversations I mentioned I put a 50 AMP plug on the BS. He asked why so large and I explained I wanted it just like the PM. I also went on to tell him how I had wired it like the PM and described where I'd connected the wires. He said that might be a problem but he would get back to me. He called back in about an hour with this account....He had searched the internet for the specs on a plug similiar to the one I described, found something that looked like it, purchased it, wired it like I did, and connected to a Grizzly machine and guess what...same result. That night (after taking my wife out to dinner) I went back to the shop and rewired the plug..green to flat neutral blade, etc. Plugged it in and off it went. Also, the Grizzly Rep called me on Saturday from his home just to make sure everything was OK.

I probably took longer to describe these events than necessary but I felt an obligation to the members of this forum that responded to my post and the folks at Grizzly to tell what happened. Darn, I'm still embarassed!

PS. Some folks don't like heights, I don't like electricty. The PM was wired by an electrician and he obviously used the white for ground. On the advice of the Grizzly manager I rewired the PM so green was the ground. Man, that Grizzly 8" jointer will look good in my shop.

Thanks to all. tom

[Matt Warfield]

Tom,

Thanks for the follow-up. Great to hear you're up and running!! And don't be too embarassed as we all do things of this sort at some time or another. Me, I make up for many others. :o

Happy Jointing!

[Dave Harker]

Tom, thank you for having the honesty to post what you did. Glad to hear Grizzly was helpful, I've had the same experience from them.

Dave

[Mark Rios]

Aren't you glad you didn't use a torch?:D :D :D :D :D

Congrats on the fix.

[lloyd morris]

Tom,

I would not be too embarrassed about the wiring issue. Those things happen. Thanks for your honesty and willingness to share the issue with all of us so we can learn from your experiences. I am not crazy about electricty or wiring things up either.

Personally, I am pretty impressed with the resolution process once Grizzly's President heard about it. We are fortunate to have Shiraz Balolia on the forum.

Lloyd

[Dev Emch]

Yes, this makes perfect sense. By doing what you did, you effectively put the same electricity across your stator windings that would occur if a dual voltage motor was wired high and powered low. That is why we were asking about dual voltage motors and junction box lead configurations.

I hate to admit this, but had you mentioned this little fact in your first post, you would have had the answer in thirty seconds.

It sounds like you used SO cord to wire your machine. This is standard practice. But a machine that uses ****ONLY**** 220 volts single phase will ***ALWAYS*** have three and only three wires. You will have a RED and a BLACK. And your ground will be GREEN. The GREEN is non negotiable.

Certain domestic machines like dryers, washers, ovens, etc. often have a dedicated neutral. These machines have 110 volt control circuits and actually use one of the 220 volt leads along with the neutral to achieve this control voltage source. Unless your running something like a 110 volt single phase power feeder or maybe a DRO, your not going to need this neutral circuit. Traditionaly, this neutral has been wired as the white wire.

So you can get away with a few things, but its been my experience with both inspectors and general common sense and even reading the exerpts out of the NEC. GREEN IS ALWAYS GROUND. WHITE IS ALWAYS NEUTRAL. The reason this is so important is that one can inadvertantly hook a neutral wire up to a hot wire when you have an inconsistant use of green and white. This is a dangerous short circuit condition that can result in fire, smoke and tripped breakers. In your case, that is exactly what you did. The difference is that you had the stator assembly of your 3 HP motor operating as a giant load resistor and you never left the setup active long enough to see smoke.

But glad this has all worked out.

Best of luck..

[john whittaker]

Ahhh Tom, Confession is good for the soul.
Thanks for the feedback and enjoy the new saw.

[Barry O'Mahony]

Tom, this makes sense, which is why I asked you in the previous thread how you had wired the plug. Glad everything went well and you didn't get hurt: it sounds like you may have connected the BS chassis to a hot conductor.

'still waiting on that equipment review when you get the chance.

[Jim O'Dell]

Another alls well that ends well! Thanks for the update, and the confirmation that Grizzly's customer service is top notch. I too am interested in a Griz 8" jointer to purchase this year. I have trouble buying big tools sight unseen...really like to touch before I commit. Personal accounts such as yours makes it easier to go out on that limb, so to speak.

And, Shiraz, be sure to give the CS/technical person that helped Mr Peterson out a big public slap on the back and some verbal praise. That's above and beyond, and what separates a great company from a good one. Jim.

[craig carlson]

Way cool. This is a testimonial to Grizzlys' customer service. Rikon is the same way. Don't feel bad we all screw up, more times than I'd like to admit.
Craig

[Steve Clardy]

Glad you got it resolved!!

[Frank Chaffee]

Tom,
Thanks to you for having asked SMC members for advice when you didn’t know what to do about your problem.
Shiraz, thanks to you for having put together an organization that responded so quickly to a woodworker’s problem, even after a bungled but well intended attempt to do so by another of your employees.
And lastly Tom, accolades to you for having publicly admitted your mistake. That kind of action is a core component of character building in my book.
Regards,
Frank

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Frank....with all due respect I disagree with your comment that some of Shiraz's people bungled some attempts to fix this problem. In my occupation, I'm often in a position where I have to give phone support to other service engineers and customers. When you do so, you ask certain questions but you, also, have to take certain information for granted. For example, in the above probem, if I was talking with the owner I'd ask "Are you sure you wired the plug correctly?" If that customer came back with the answer "I wired it exactly like my PM66 and it works fine!" I and most others would take it for granted that the new b/s was wired correctly. The truth of the matter is that the PM66 was miswired at both ends. Secondly, the level of troubleshooting you can do is limited by the technical skills of the person at the other end of the phone and the tools they may have. Then you have to consider what kind of safety situations you might place that person in as you try to troubleshoot and what technical tools that person has. Often, you have to be very careful when assisting a customer or another person over the phone for safety and legal liability concerns. This leads to a lot of "black box swapping" in the interest of both the aforementioned concerns.

PS. I don't own a piece of Grizzley equipment and am not in any way employed by or reimbursed by or related to or know anyone who works for same institution. I just have 29 years of service experience for 2 of the largest global companies and know the difficulties of working over the phone with others.

[Dev Emch]

Frank....with all due respect I disagree with your comment that some of Shiraz's people bungled some attempts to fix this problem. In my occupation, I'm often in a position where I have to give phone support to other service engineers and customers. When you do so, you ask certain questions but you, also, have to take certain information for granted. For example, in the above probem, if I was talking with the owner I'd ask "Are you sure you wired the plug correctly?" If that customer came back with the answer "I wired it exactly like my PM66 and it works fine!" I and most others would take it for granted that the new b/s was wired correctly. The truth of the matter is that the PM66 was miswired at both ends. Secondly, the level of troubleshooting you can do is limited by the technical skills of the person at the other end of the phone and the tools they may have. Then you have to consider what kind of safety situations you might place that person in as you try to troubleshoot and what technical tools that person has. Often, you have to be very careful when assisting a customer or another person over the phone for safety and legal liability concerns. This leads to a lot of "black box swapping" in the interest of both the aforementioned concerns.

PS. I don't own a piece of Grizzley equipment and am not in any way employed by or reimbursed by or related to or know anyone who works for same institution. I just have 29 years of service experience for 2 of the largest global companies and know the difficulties of working over the phone with others.
Ken, I think that Frank used the term bungled up to describe the advice that Tom had been given. Advice that told him to remove the motor and its pulley system, using a propane torch if needed, and ship this entire kit back to the mother ship. It is this advice that made me wince over the circumstances and to get really concerned about the using a propane torch otherwise known as the blue wrench. I too have had my share of trouble shooting experience. The best case was in trouble shooting a microprocessor based votrex flow meter in a surgar processing plant 1800 miles away. The meter was experienceing intermittant failures. Finally, the user hit it with a hammer and it came to life. He wanted to know if he could hit the rest of them with a hammer. Turns out, his co-worker was using a Miller Tig Welder about 20 feet down the run tig welding stainless steel process tubing together. High EMI emmissions from the welder was forcing the tiny, low voltage microprocessor brain to continously reset as these all had watch dog timers in hardware to force a reset and reboot or IPL. Its the software that continously resets the timer to prevent it from forcing an IPL reboot in software. The welder scrambled the brains and thus, the hardware timer was continously rebooting and then getting scrambled. For two days we chased this issue over the phone and even tried to download dumps using the internet connections. For two days, this yahoo was welding pipes with no EMI shielding. We would have had the solution instantly had we known about this welder! So in that regard, I can understand the problem. I disagree with the intial over reaction to the problem by the service tech however.

[Shiraz Balolia]

Tom - thank you for posting this and clearing up the fact that the machine was not, in any way, defective. That is a great machine and we have many, many happy customers.

Dev - while you have posted several times about the "blue wrench" etc.... you have no idea what was really said by both parties and in what context. You do not know what was said that led to that point. Frankly, for you to jump in and start giving wiring advice when you have never seen that machine or its control box was plain dangerous, regardless of whether you are an electrical engineer or not!

[Frank Chaffee]

Frank....with all due respect I disagree with your comment that some of Shiraz's people bungled some attempts to fix this problem.
Thank you Ken for pointing out my unfortunate choice of words to describe the first Grizzly tech’s recommendations to Tom.
Admittedly I did not go back to Tom’s previous thread and re-read it before posting here. I was relying on my memory that Shiraz stated there was an internal problem within his company that he would deal with appropriately, and I called it “bungling”.

Tom - I am going to have one of my top managers call you to take care of this. And "use a blow torch" is nonsense. We'll take care of that internal issue with the person you spoke to. Before you try any of the things listed as a result of your post, let us work to get it resolved properly and to your satisfaction first.
Sorry about the problem.
I too have given tech support over the phone, and often to people for whom English is a second (or third, etc), language. I well know how difficult it can be to ascertain precisely what the situation is onsite. I was not actually criticizing the tech in question either, just summarizing and over generalizing my impression and memory of Shiraz’s post, and I have no doubt that said tech did a more thorough diagnosis of the situation than I would have done.
But while we are on the topic of phone tech support I would like to caution any newbie to the field to be especially careful when dealing with persons from Great Britain or Australia, because they *think* they are speaking English, but… well… oh never mind.
My only intent was to complement everyone involved in resolving Tom's problem.
Best to all,
Frank