220Vac single pole, to work in US 220Vac double pole

[chriskoz]

TL;DR

Hello, I need help. I have a printing machine and dryer unit that I purchased from China. It came wired as 220Vac single pole. How do i make it work with the US 220Vac double pole. attached are 2 pics of what I'm dealing with. Thank you in advance.

 

[russ_watters]

You'll need to ask the manufacturer/vendor.

The yellow wire is too small to be the earth/ground for the entire machine, and isn't going through the main relay so it's probably the control circuit common/ground, not a true full-system ground. So it probably requires 220V, not the 120V of a single phase US hot.

The wiring is odd overall though, with two hot wires on different poles of the relay. It looks like a mis-purposed 3-phase plus ground relay.

 

[chriskoz]

You'll need to ask the manufacturer/vendor.

The yellow wire is too small to be the earth/ground for the entire machine, and isn't going through the main relay so it's probably the control circuit common/ground, not a true full-system ground. So it probably requires 220V, not the 120V of a single phase US hot.

The wiring is odd overall though, with two hot wires on different poles of the relay. It looks like a mis-purposed 3-phase plus ground relay.

this is what they sent me,,, as one currently in use.. using the 220Vac single pole

 

[russ_watters]

View attachment 290886

this is what they sent me,,, as one currently in use.. using the 220Vac single pole

How are we supposed to interpret that? They won't send you a wiring diagram?

 

[Vanadium 50]

I like how one wire is labeled "Fire". It may be appropriate.

 

[artis]

I was about to comment on the phase wire being labeled "fire" but @Vanadium 50 beat me to it.

@chriskoz other members will correct me but wasn't the US split phase system 120v and 240v instead of 220?
Anyway for most applications that require 230/240v as is common here in Europe for all applications, in the US one then uses the two "hot" wires of the split phase system because you effectively have a neutral and 120v on either side of the neutral so if you use one live and one neutral you get 120v but if you use both live wires you get 240.
But without at least a simple schematic just looking from pictures it is next to impossible to tell you the best/right solution in your case.

is the picture in your post #3 your own or one that they sent you ?
It seems that the brown in that picture is meant live/phase and the blue is neutral, the green is grounding.

I don't want to guess here but for the US system I think most likely you have to take the two hot wires from the 240v output and connect one to the RED or Chinese labeled "fire" wire and the other to the neutral or blue or Chinese labeled "zero" wire , that would seem most logical

In the US 240v case you then take one wire and that becomes your "phase/hot" while the other live wire becomes your "neutral" as is used in Europe and elsewhere.

 

[jrmichler]

You NEED a qualified electrician to figure this out. This problem is something that we cannot properly solve via the internet. Thread closed.