240v
Member
- Location
- Cincinnati Ohio
- Occupation
- Maintenance electrician
I just started this job a couple weeks ago at a steel treatment plant and I'm literally the only electrician out of a 3 man maintenance team. One of the first tasks of many was a NO induction sensor with a indicator light. I was told it hadn't worked in years but people kept letting the shot get low in the blaster causing rejected product. The first thing I checked was the light and it was bad so I replaced it pretty straight forward but instead of the light flashing when the shot got low it would only flash while in contact with the shot and stop flashing when it went below the sensor so I thought maybe it was a faulty sensor so I went to replace it and I found five black wires numbered 1-4 and a white wire that is used for neutral as it should be but for the sensor to the junction box there's only 3 wires one of which I assumed was a ground a hot and neutral now there is five wires coming from the light to the junction box of which only two were connected to the light one black(hot) and the neutral the other three went straight through up to the junction box where the sensor connects. I tracked the wires in the control panel and I can't really make sense of how it's wired one seems to connect to a relay just in one spot one connects to the 120v on the coil power supply goes through a fuse link and the other seems to connect to a auxiliary. I thought I could just do away with the extra wires and just run the hot straight to the sensor and back to the light and it would work which it did the exact same way. I need the indicator light to flash when the sensor isn't sensing the shot not when it is. Can someone help me with a solution. Can I use a relay cause a NC sensor is a couple hundred bucks and all we have are NO sensors but there's a relay in the control panel I think I can utilize if that's a possible solution which with the way it was wired led me to believe that's what someone originally intended or tried to do but didn't do something right. Can someone please tell me how to fix this properly with the five wires already ran and what and how to do it or maybe explain to me what you think they were attempting. I just need the thing to work I'm thought just directly wiring it would solve the problem and after I direct wired it without the other wires it quit working after I buttoned everything back up. It was working when I turned the power off to button it down then when I turned the power back on it didn't work. Cause I couldn't get it to work the way we wanted we were going to just tell people to add shot when the light quit flashing until I could fix it properly but now it's not working at all again.
