i recently took apart an awesome espresso machine and found a neat water pump. i want to hook it up but i'm afraid i'll hook it up wrong and... blow it up in my face..... it runs on 120v and 60 hz.
now i'm 80 percent sure that if i just hook one connector from the pump to a wall outlet and another connector to the other wall prong it won't work because of the 60 hz... but i think that's not a problem becuase connected to the pump was a very small circular tablet with 2 wires connecting from the pump connector to the mainboard of the expresso machine... and i'm guessing that's the clock that makes it 60 hz... correct me if i'm wrong...
i'd hope to use it with my radioshack .5 amp and 125 vac reed relay to control it.
now if you need to see some better specs bout it, i have a few links.
and incase i dident make the question clear i just wanna hook the pumq up to turn it on and use it. but do i just connect the two prongs on the pump to the two prongs in the wall outlet? if not how so? and do i need that little tablet connected to the two wires?
any help is extremely appreciated as i have been trying to get this working for some time now.
p.s i am new ( this is my first project ) at dealing with high voltage and possibly high amperage so if anything you explain is dangerous to do just quickly state so, thanks!
i'm probably gonna hook this up tonight so if anybody is aware that i will electricute myself... please go ahead and say something like "yea that's probably not gonna work, too much amprage... it'lll probably blow up in your face..." or just a warning would be fine...
i'd guess that it'll be okay too hook it up if no one answers....
if you want to err on the safe side, hook it up in series with a 60 watt light bulb. if it shorts, the light turns on and nothing blows up. if it works, it works.
If you live in the US, your 120 volt AC (Alternating Current) outlets already have a frequency of 60hz (hence Alternating). If the motor says 120 volts AC then it will run when connected directly to the wall prongs, just be careful not to touch the wires or let them touch each other. And remember, it's not electrocution unless you die.
thank you for all the help everybody! i'm gonna get comfortable, get safe, and hook it up... obviously if i don't post back..... i'm dead.... lol don't worry i'll be fine... but as soon as it either works or doesent work, i'll post back... and thanks for the light bulb idea, i'm definitly doing that.
yay! worked, without the little blue tablet thing... but strangly, the light bulb and the pump are on at the same time... is there a reason for that, or is the light bulb sapposed to be on if the pump works?
also, does it matter which way i connect the pump? like it worked the way i connected it, but if i switched the wires on the pump, would it still work, or could it short it?
and thanks alot, this was a successfull first high voltage and somewhat high amp test... as for the relay, i'll have to find a relay that can withstand the amount of amperage
It probably won't matter which direction you hook up the pump.
The pump and light bulb are acting like a voltage divider so some part of the voltage is being dropped across the filament inside the bulb. It's probably not a problem unless the pump isn't moving fast enough. The bulb is also acting like a current limiter to the pump. If it isn't moving fast enough then you can go to a higher wattage bulb that will have a lower resistance across the filament.
so i achieved what i ultimately wanted... i was able to just hook up the pump to a regular wall electric wire, and i think everything is fine... i first tried it connected to a surge protector... then i just plugged it into the wall. it seems it can handle the full electricity. it gets slightly warm after a couple minutes use, but what can you expect from a pump that's not meant to constantly meant to pump... in th future if i decide to build something, i can just route a switch or a relay to the pump connection. Thank you very much everybody, i'm glad it all worked out and i dident get electrocuted...
also, you should manage to hook it up to your relay.
Of course, you would be better to use a multimeter and test the amperage first but 41W means 330mA and not 3A.
P=UI --> I = P/U. Even the peak value for the current (330mA*sqrt(2)=467mA) is still fine with the specs, so it should be safe.
Unless... the pump draws very high current at start up, which could be possible and could in fact use up the relay contacts.
i'll check it out with my meter, but more importantly i think a switch would be more suited for making anything with a water pump... unless it's meant to be automated...
i'm not 100% on all this technical mumbo jumbo cuz i havent gotten my engineering degree yet.. i'm gonna ( i'm in hs )
but i put the multi meter on 10A and when i tried shutting off and turning on the pump it seemed to shoot up to random values, some as low as .05, some as high as 6.73... so i think the kills the idea of using the .5A the radioshack relay can handle