Expert Found
29 September 2008
In last week's post I discussed the electrical control box for my new coffee
pulper. I had talked to several electricians in town but none of them
could help, they couldn't even tell me what the gizmos inside the box are
called. Luckily, there seems to be a person or two that actually
visit my little website and read these stories. A couple of those
people even had some answers for me.
A friend's father was the biggest help. He has a lot of experience with
large industrial mining equipment and wiring up my tiny little motors (tiny in
comparison to giant mining equipment he's used to) was easy for him Not only
did he find the 800 page manual for the electronic gizmos, he also explained it
all to me. He answered all my questions and left me with an excellent wiring
diagram that makes the whole thing seem simple.
I received help from a couple other readers too. The next time I have a
problem I can't figure out, I won't hesitate to write about it here and ask
for help. Thanks to everyone's help, I'm now confident that I fully
understand the problem. I even sent the wiring diagram back to the people
that made the pulper in Colombia. I hope they appreciate the gesture and
pass the information along to future customers. If they had sent me a
wiring diagram with the pulper in the first place, this whole mess could
have been avoided.
My brother thinks that stories about wiring my pulper are horribly boring but I
don't care, it's fascinating to me. I've posted the wiring diagrams so
everyone can join in the excitement. My hand drawn diagram on the left is
how the box came wired from Colombia. It would have worked that way but
it's not quite right. First, I needed it wired for two separate electric
feeds instead of a single feed like in the diagram. Second, the two motors
were sharing a single overload relay instead of each one using its own.
The far simpler diagram on the right was drawn by my friend after
listening to his father's explanation of how it all worked. This is
the diagram that should have come with the box in the first place. I'm
certainly not a professional electrician but using the diagram I can
now see for myself how everything works. I much prefer to understand
something for myself rather than paying an "expert" to do all the work
for me.
It's a big relief to have the coffee pulper's electrical control box figured
out but I'm still a ways from having it all working. I've been busy
finishing the roof so I can paint the floor so I can move the pulper in place
so I can wire it all together. The plumbing is done so once I get the
wiring done all that's left is connecting the auger, motors, side panels and
several other miscellaneous parts. I need to have it all done soon
because the coffee trees are loaded with ripe coffee cherry.
I'm confident I can get it all ready in a week except... my stupid
mower just broke... again. The tractor has been broken for a month or
so but I haven't bothered to fix it because I always have other things
to do that seem more important. Fixing the mower is critical though
because we use it constantly.
Usually the mower is fairly reliable but this is the second time it has
broken this month. I just got the mower running again after fixing its
alternator. It took me a couple weeks because the local dealer had a
new alternator for $300 or I could wait a couple weeks and order the bearings
from California for $6. I chose to wait a couple weeks.
This was yet another example of why I don't like to trust the "experts."
If I had taken the mower to the mechanic they would have charged me $300 for
the new alternator plus $75 an hour for labor. Instead, I fixed it myself
for $6.
Fixing the mower this time required pulling the engine completely out.
Compared to pulling the engine out of the tractor, the mower is easy. I
think I've found the problem and now all I have to do is find the replacement
parts. If I get lucky, they'll have them in stock instead of having to
be shipped from California.
As long as nothing else breaks then next week's post will have pictures of
the running mower and a working pulper. It's going to be a busy week but
I'm confident that I can get it all done. If I'm really lucky, the week
after that will have pictures of me at the beach. We'll have to wait and see.
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