The end of Instagram as we know it is here | 220v Contactor Relay

This hack is ridiculous and a hazard. The NEC bans the use of MWBC’s that don’t use a common circuit breaker tie-bar. The tie-bar causes both halves of the 240VAC circuit to turn off incase of an overcurrent condition.

Everything industrial is 3 phase though; it’s 240V phase/neutral or 415V phase/phase here though. You can certainly get a 3 phase connection to your house and/or shed though – it costs about $1000 to replace the meter plus a bit more for wiring – if you have a problematic power-tool habit like me.

Even if you do go ahead and try to solve your electric issues by yourself, don’t shut off only your electric panel’s main circuit breaker, which is usually the top switch. Turning that off before all the miniature circuit breakers (the smaller switches that control a specific outlet or part of the home) means the entire load of electricity suddenly has nowhere to go, which could overload the panel—and that’s an expensive fix. Shut off each individual circuit first, then turn off the main breaker.

When I was a kid I built a Tesla coil using a 12kV neon sign transformer which my mom got for me (this was the 1960s, before Americans turned into wimps). At some point I had the transformer sitting on my workbench and plugged in, with nothing connected to the output. The corona discharge made a hissing sound, but I had music on and couldn’t hear it. Perhaps eight inches away was my table radio, which had a metal chassis. I reached between the two to get something, and my arm shortened the air path enough for an arc to form. I had a couple of nifty burn marks (entry and exit) for a few weeks.

Considering the existence of deep subzero freezers, it would still perform better than a resistive element. Or have it draw the heat from the indoors and run some crypto miners to make up for it.

Before I bring the tools out, I’m going to ask you questions to get an idea of what’s going on and where to look. You might have your theories about what’s wrong and what my questions mean, but don’t give roundabout replies to match those assumptions. Giving me straight answers will save us both time.

Being in the controller business I’ve been presented more than one friend’s design with insufficient cooling. One friend even mounted his SSR to a decent heat sink then mounted the entire assembly inside his housing with no air circulation. His response was “it will work” and he’s had two SSRs fail that I know of. At least in his case, the steel housing kept the “magic smoke” contained!

Some adjustment necessary. This shot turned out well at -0.3 EV, but a lot of my shots under bright conditions could really have used -0.7 EV of adjustment.

Also, worth noting is that many cheap supplies out of China are designed for 110V/220V, +/- 10%. Consequently they’re designed to 121V/242V. For those of us in 240V areas, so in perfect conditions, they’re operating at the very top end of their specifications.

So you have to put new wire to have proper L1 anyway, you might as well put one that will serve properly 7times faster.

Also, if you leave your oscilloscope floating at mains voltage with an isolation transformer puts you in danger as all earthed parts of the oscilloscope will be floating at that voltage. Again: when things are floating, it is ok to have 1 fault.. but the second fault will definitely kill you or break something as no RCD will protect you.

There are many applications that don’t require 10A switching. As long as you are aware of the power limit of the device, there’s no harm in making a version for 1A or less.