Scotle HR460 Rewiring Heating Elements

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Scotle HR460 Rewiring Heating Elements

The green wire should be going to the RIGHT SWITCH, right? Just want to make sure before I wire this all up. Thanks Stj!

[stj]

Re: Scotle HR460 Rewiring Heating Elements

looking at those foto's, the black things are relays.
the surface mount stuff is just associated led's & resistors, so you can see what it's doing.

one thing that did stand out - does yours forget the settings? because your battery holder has no coincell in it!

[stj]

Re: Scotle HR460 Rewiring Heating Elements

The green wire should be going to the RIGHT SWITCH, right? Just want to make sure before I wire this all up. Thanks Stj!

the current wiring?
you said the switches both connected to the same place as the main heater gnd
so i used the same colour

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Scotle HR460 Rewiring Heating Elements

I tried editing that post after I posted it but I keep running into this site not being available. I had a nice post typed up. Essentially, I was saying yes, I do want a large and a small heating area. From looking at your diagram though, the small area would always be on, correct? I'd like to be able to turn it off, if need be, like it's currently setup. To do that, could I just hook the green wire up to the RIGHT SWITCH? I think that'd give me a free GND wire.

Not sure what I'd do with that. Not really sure why they're using it if they have the switches controlling the GND. I wonder what would happen if, with the very original wiring, I had turned off all the switches. Would the whole board heat up?

Three GNDs, the main one (that's huge), then the two smaller ones that go to the switches. Do I need that big one if I'm just using the switches GND?

I'd like to be able to turn off all heating elements if I have to.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Scotle HR460 Rewiring Heating Elements

looking at those foto's, the black things are relays.
the surface mount stuff is just associated led's & resistors, so you can see what it's doing.

one thing that did stand out - does yours forget the settings? because your battery holder has no coincell in it!

Mine does not forget the settings, at least not stuff like the various temperature profiles. I too thought it was weird that the coin cell was missing. It looks like it was never used. Wonder what would happen if I put a battery in there.

Not really sure how PLCs work. I understand the basic concept. They have input and output lines. They're software controllable and they look for stuff on the input lines. When they see it, your program determines what happens on the output lines.

There's a lot of labels but I've never looked at a PLC before or anything like it. So, when I see C0, Y0, C1, Y1, C2, Y2, Y3, C3, Y4, Y5, Y6, Y7, Y10, Y11, C4, Y12, Y13, Y14, Y15, Y16, Y17

It's a bit hard to figure out. There's also some that say COM. I think the DA0 and DA1 might be digital to analog convertors maybe? There's a little header that says NTC. I believe that's for a Negative Temperature Coefficient thermistor.

I'm thinking the "X"s might be inputs, the "Y"s might be output and perhaps the COM and C# (0, 1, 2, etc) are COMMON or GND? There's also the Pt100 TC(E,K) inputs I have to figure out still.

[stj]

Re: Scotle HR460 Rewiring Heating Elements

the controller can turn on the central heating area,
all the switches do is add the outer heaters to the same circuit as the central ones.

the red is power and goes to every panel,
the green is switched return and goes to the central panels constantly and the outer panels by the switches.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Scotle HR460 Rewiring Heating Elements

the controller can turn on the central heating area,
all the switches do is add the outer heaters to the same circuit as the central ones.

the red is power and goes to every panel,
the green is switched return and goes to the central panels contstantly and the outer panels by the switches.

Thank you!!!!

I'm going to go to bed soon but I'll start wiring it up tomorrow and see how it works out. Thanks so much Stj!

For those C# labels on the PLC, I've changed my mind. I don't think they're connected to GND. I think they're control lines and tell's the PLC if we're sinking or sourcing.

[budm]

Re: Scotle HR460 Rewiring Heating Elements

BTW, when you say GND, you do not mean the SAFETY GND which is connected to the chassis, right? If it is 240V then the power will be LINE to LINE instead of LINE and NEUTRAL.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Scotle HR460 Rewiring Heating Elements

BTW, when you say GND, you do not mean the SAFETY GND which is connected to the chassis, right? If it is 240V then the power will be LINE to LINE instead of LINE and NEUTRAL.

When I say GND, I mean the line on the PSU that says AC-N. Is that really 120V there? I understand how the 240V works but I don't see how these heating units are getting the extra 120V, unless the AC-N is actually hot. I didn't check with a voltmeter. Perhaps I'll do that once I get it back together.

Thanks.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Scotle HR460 Rewiring Heating Elements

It makes sense now. I checked the pinouts on the plug. There's 0.000OHM resistance between the 120V and the AC-N line, so it's actually 120V, not GND. Thank you for pointing that out to me Budm.

Both the ones listed as GND (the larger wires on the bottom) have low resistance with the 120V lines on the plug. So both those GND ones that go to the BGA are actually 120V lines.

I'm a bit confused though. How does the electricity travel to the heating units now? I originally thought a long time ago that they each got 240V from one line. But it appears they're getting 120V from two lines, is that right?

[stj]

Re: Scotle HR460 Rewiring Heating Elements

lets call the wires comming into the unit.
120v-white or W
120v black or B
and ground, that is both a 240v center-tap and house ground.

it's my understanding that one side of the panels is getting 120v-W
and the other side is getting 120v-B

so they actually get 240v

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Scotle HR460 Rewiring Heating Elements

the controller can turn on the central heating area,
all the switches do is add the outer heaters to the same circuit as the central ones.

the red is power and goes to every panel,
the green is switched return and goes to the central panels constantly and the outer panels by the switches.

I owe you an apology. I had you do all that work and I've decided to keep the current setup. The reason is because of your drawing though. It gave me a better understanding of how the unit worked. The manual is pretty bad and very hard to understand. The english is horrible (C is my native tongue, English is my second!). Anyway, I was studying your diagram and realized that if I had both switches off, the four inner heating elements should work. I didn't know that before hand. So, I gave it a shot. Both switches off, I hit Start, sure enough, the inside four warmed right up, both outer ones were off. I didn't realize I had three zones, I thought I just had two.

I like the current setup better now. Because I can now do a larger configuration of boards.

What did you think of my idea for the future? The one where you can just tap on which heating element you want active and it'll be active until you untap it. Then you could just create custom zones, whenever you wanted. Each heating element will have the built in thermocouples, so we could measure the temps more accurately and get a very good overall temp, you know? Right now, I think there's just one thermocouple to measure all the preheaters. Essentially, if I'm understanding it correctly, only one heater gets it's temp measured and all of them get adjusted based on that temp.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Scotle HR460 Rewiring Heating Elements

lets call the wires comming into the unit.
120v-white or W
120v black or B
and ground, that is both a 240v center-tap and house ground.

it's my understanding that one side of the panels is getting 120v-W
and the other side is getting 120v-B

so they actually get 240v

Yes, that's my understanding now, but I don't get it. Let's break it down to just one heating element. If one lead is getting 120VAC and the other lead is getting 120VAC, where's the loop? We also need a full look, right? The electricity has to travel to gnd somehow, right? Where's the grounds?

AC has always confused me a bit. I think it's probably real simple, I just don't got a lot of experience with it. That's all. With most of the DC stuff I play with, if I make a mistake, I might release some magic smoke. With the AC stuff I've played with, I make a mistake and it hurts very bad.

[stj]

Re: Scotle HR460 Rewiring Heating Elements

you have 2 ac 120v phases

when one is 120v above ground, the other is 120v below ground - so they are 240v difference between them.

draw a horizontal line, that's your ground.
now draw a sinewave on it - that's your first phase.
now draw another sinewave mirroring it so they cross over at 0 and then go above and below ground at equal amounts.
that's your other 120v plase.