I need help on why my breakers on my Ballisticast mark 2 keep tripping.

[TonyN]

I have a older mark 2 that the breakers want to trip off and on. It's very speractic and it isnt at no set time. I will be casting then the breaker will trip and I'll have to stop the machine and let it reset after 1-2 min. Sometimes it won't trip at all and other times it still do it 3 times.
I have a magma pot on it. So is the anything I need to test or look at to see if it's pulling more current then it should?

[Rich/WIS]

Breakers, like most things, aren't created equal and don't live forever. Not familiar with your equipment but if the breaker is easily replaced you might want to replace them if you can't find the problem elsewhere in the system.

[TonyN]

I did replace them and they still trip. I'm hoping I can find some help in here to solve the problem.

[GhostHawk]

I'd be looking for a heavier duty circuit you could plug them into.

While it is possible for a breaker to get "weak" over time. In my experience it happens when it is right on the edge of what that circuit can handle. Ie toaster oven might pop a 20 amp breaker one time in 4 but won't ever pop a 30 amp breaker.

So take a long close look at how much power it needs and what you are feeding it with. Heavy duty extention cord to a 30 amp circuit if one is available is where I would start.

[Jeffrey]

One of several things could be going on. First off you need to determine if the breakers are tripping for a good reason, or if they are failing. I am much more familiar with electricity than I am with the Ballistacast. The first thing you do is unplug the Ballistacast. Open the electrical section and check the electrical connections for loose or burned wires. Loose wires on breakers can cause the breaker to overheat and nuisance trip. While you are in there look for degraded insulation on any of the wires. If there are any wires or connections in there that need replacing, you will need to get the correct replacement wire / connectors. For these you will likely need to go to a store that sells parts for appliances. They have the high temperature wire and connectors you may need. If you do have failed wires or connectors, cut off a piece of wire or the connector to bring with you to get the proper replacement. If all looks good in there, find a friend that is an electrician, air conditioning, or refrigeration technician. They will have a tool called an ampmeter. This tool measures how much electricity is flowing through a wire. With this tool it can be determined if the breakers are getting worn. Your friend is not likely to loan you the ampmeter as it is an expensive tool and takes a certain amount of knowledge to operate. Good luck.

[Preacher Jim]

You may have a lose connection some where or a wire that moves may have broken enough strands to create higher amps. Most problems can be traced to connection that needs tightened. If you have replaced breakers then check all connections.

[NyFirefighter357]

Jeffry& GhostHawk give sound advice. Clean all the contacts as well. Your heating element might also be going bad and creating too high of a resistance. Check all your values with an ohm meter.

[TonyN]

How do I check the heating elements? Both breakers have been tripping. One is for the pot and the other are for the P.ID. I believe. When the one trips the P.I.D will go blank. If the other trips the pots cool down.

[TonyN]

Yesterday as I was adding ingots to the pot is when it seemed to happen the most. So maybe its pulling to much power to the pot and breaking the breakers? Sometimes it's when I turn on the machine they trip also.

[NyFirefighter357]

This is for a stove but it's the same idea. http://www.acmehowto.com/howto/appliance/range/electric/check/heating-element.php

Formula for Resistance(OHMS)=Rated voltage x 2 divided element wattage rating. = or- 2%

120 x 120 = 14,400
Element wattage 750? 14,400/750=19.2

220x 220 = 48,400/750=64.5

[skrapyard628]

As far as using an ampmeter to check it out...they have some fairly inexpensive ones you can get from home depot. They are the clamp on type. Just clamp the thing onto the power cable when its turned on and see how much current its pulling.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Klein-Tools-400-Amp-AC-Auto-Ranging-Digital-Clamp-Meter-with-Temp-CL210/207144572

I use this exact meter as my cheap travel meter when Im out on the road and when comparing it to the expensive Fluke remote 3-phase ampmeter set I have the readings were all within .1A

[Rattlesnake Charlie]

Since you've replaced the breaker, and it didn't do this previously, you have a problem with your pot. While unplugged (duh), open the electrical controls section and make sure all connections are tight. If it continues, you probably need a new pot. Something is either arcing or shorting, and that causes an increase in current that pops the breaker.

[TonyN]

I ran it 3 hours strait yesterday and it didnt have one problem. The breaker was 15 AMP before as they tripped all the time so I went up to 20 AMP. It's a off and on thing with the machine. Some days its 3 times it will trip and other days its very little.

[NineInchNails]

I Googled your machine and these are the specs I found. It appears you should be running a 30 amp breaker:

Mark II Specs

Drive

1. Rack and pinion; eliminates stress on motor mounts

2. Gear motor

3. Easy access to the drive system

4. Pour control air cylinder 40 psi

Electrical – 240volt AC 30 amp

1. Two heavy – duty shaded pole blowers

2. NEMA type 1 enclosure

3. Digital PID temperature controlled

4. Electronic counter

Furnace

1. 2600 watt heating and two 150 watt elements

2. Digital control

3. Capacity: 100 lb. alloy

[MaLar]

Do you have Arc fault breakers?
My AC would kick the breakers every time I turned it on.
The AC and the Arc fault breakers didn't play well with each other.
Had the Electrician change them and all is well.
Call your Electrician and ask them.

[jsizemore]

I ran it 3 hours strait yesterday and it didnt have one problem. The breaker was 15 AMP before as they tripped all the time so I went up to 20 AMP. It's a off and on thing with the machine. Some days its 3 times it will trip and other days its very little.

Let me see if I understand. You had a 15 amp circuit and it tripped too often, so you changed the circuit breaker to 20 amp?

[BamaNapper]

According to NineInchNails, you're looking at a furnace that uses 14 AMPS. If you're running it through 20A breakers it should be fine, but a 30A feed would be preferred in my house. That's 10AWG wire to a 30A outlet or disconnect, dedicated, and no extension cords.

I'm not familiar with the furnace. The clamp on ammeter is the best option. Measuring the resistance of the heating element can be meaningful, but also measure the resistance from the element leads to the case of the element. You can have a perfectly good heating element that's shorted to the case it's contained in. As the element heats and cools it moves around and may end up shorting to the case, and the case is almost certainly connected to safety ground.

Another thought is the PID. Heating elements take a second or two to heat up. During that time, the element draws significantly more current (maybe that's why the specs call for 30A) than it does once it's hot (14A). Most PIDs drive an SSR, flipping the power to the heating element on/off with its program. If it's programmed for control on a second-by-second basis, it can be terribly inefficient and increase the current demand. You could be switching that startup current (30A ?) like a toddler with a new-found light switch. The breaker isn't going to stand for that. Make sure your PID isn't switching too quickly. I would assume you shouldn't see it turn on or off for less than maybe 30 seconds, maybe even a minute or two. You need that hysteresis for the breaker to recover/cool from the rush of current when the load first turns on.

[jsizemore]

Please read post #13. I see no mention of increasing the wire size. 14awg is good enough for 15 amps but over the long haul at 14 amps that the pot is pulling the wire is gonna become brittle and start tripping the breaker. For long term use the 15 amp circuit should be run at 12 amps. Sticking a 20 amp breaker on 15 amp wire is asking for trouble especially on a heating element that slowly starts drawing a bit more current as it warms up the circuit. I see this happen all the time with commercial appliances that run for 10-12 hours straight.

Simple test I use is to grab the wire after it's been running a while. If it's warm, then the circuit is inadequate. If you don't supply adequate power then the appliance burns out before it's time.

[AggieEE]

Two things, 1 if you are going to run a 30A circuit make sure you have 10ga. wire running from the breaker panel in your house/shop to your outlet and have the correct plug to handle the current. 2 if you use a clip on amp meter only grab one wire at a time. If you grab a pair and one of them is the return line it will read 0 amps.

[mjwcaster]

I have some confusion.
Can you describe your setup in more detail.

What are the breakers you are talking about and have replaced?

Household breakers in a main breaker box?

Or circuit breakers on the unit itself?

Pot and pid on different breakers?

Wouldn’t the pot be plugged into the pid?

So starting at the wall outlet where the system is plugged in what is the wiring path?

And i would also vote for a bad connection somewhere, but it will take a better understanding of your system to narrow it down.

Lastly there is concern in that you uprated a breaker but not the wiring.
A big no no and a great way to burn your house down if the wiring cannot handle it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[odfairfaxsub]

Reducing voltage across a element does not increase amperage as if you were figuring

I=W/V

Think about a light bulb on a resistor almost. The resistor decreases voltage however as you increase your resistance you decrease voltage causing your bulbs to create less lumens of light.

Decreasing voltage improves life of a element but may cause your run time to melt increased.

Do not use the amps equals watts divided by volts to figure out your amp draw

[odfairfaxsub]

I would choose however to maybe run your formula as

Volts divides by ohms equals amperage

[BamaNapper]

Yes, watts (power) divided by voltage is amperage. Plug a 1000 watt toaster into a 120V outlet and grab that hand-dandy clamp on ammeter. It's going to read about 8 amps. Trying to figure out the resistance of that 1000 watt toaster is a bit more difficult. But it's because you're picking up an ohmmeter that uses a small DC voltage to determine resistance. Plug that same oven into the wall and you're using big AC voltages. With DC you measure resistance. With AC you need to calculate reactance, where resistance is just one of three components.

Simple examples. Measure a capacitor with your ohmmeter and it's millions of ohms. You should be safe putting those millions of ohms across 120V. But if you try it there's a good chance you're going to pop the breaker or blow up the capacitor. On the other hand, measure across a transformer and you have about 5 ohms. That means you should see 24 amps if you plug it in. But you plug it in and the ammeter says it's pulling less than .1 amps. The whole resistance thing falls apart with AC circuits. Technically, once an analysis is done a device may be said to appear as a 16.6 ohm load at 2-phase 60 Hz. While that may be what an engineer is looking for, the rest of us understand it easier if they simply call it a 2600W heater.

My point is that a heating element rated for 2600 watts is going to pull 12.5 amps from a 2-phase connection, regardless of all the ohms you've measured or calculated. The power rating of a furnace (in watts) divided by the design operating voltage (2-phase 120VAC = 208VAC) will give you the AC current draw when stable. As I mentioned earlier, there may be an in-rush current that is much larger than the operating current when the device is first powered on. It gets mind twisting if you really get into the weeds with this stuff. Also, rember that current (amperage) in an AC circuit changes the same way the voltage does, 60 times a second.

[Mike W1]

I've really forgotten over the years probably most of what I learned in school. Somehow can't put my mind about having #14 on anything but a light bulb circuit and certainly not a 220v setup. My pots are on #12 with 20amp breakers all of about 3 feet from the main box. And my pots are Lee 10 pounders at about 500 watts! Each has it's own circuit.

Had a problem with my air compressor sometimes kicking a breaker in the garage and my brother enlightened me to the fact that the 99¢ receptacles are 15 amp and the better ones are 20. Just that took care of that problem for then as the wire was #12.. The next spring I ran a #10 across the garage. Used the Same 20 amp breaker on that.

Somebody above had mentioned feeling the wire for heat. I've often thought some appliances use some marginally sized cords. The electric broom in our kitchen does that but I've never had that upgraded. Wires are all #12 with the better receptacles too.

[BamaNapper]

You've got a handle on it Mike. 15A = 14 AWG; 20A = 12 AWG; 30A = 10 AWG. When in doubt, you can oversize the wire, oversize the receptacle, and undersize the breaker.

[TonyN]

No. I'm talking about the breakers on the machine. They where 15 amp and I put 20 amp in there place. I talked to one of the Mods on this site the beginning of this summer and told me I could go from 15 amp to 20 amp. I actually bought the machine from a guy on this group. He wasnt sure why it would trip as he didn't have that problem much. He thought they whe older and needed replaced soon. Hatch is the mods name. Just came to my head... Hatch helped the guy I bought it from re wire the machine. I ended up asking Hatch about the breakers tripping and he told me to go with the 20 AMP. It's weird is that the one that was tripping before I took out before and ended up putting back in and it's not tripping as much. Like I said before. Its a off and on thing.

[odfairfaxsub]

The Watts is a engineered idea that I can provide said amount of watts if all conditions are correct. Easiest thing to do really is check your hot leg amperage w a clip on but watts isn’t necessarily a good way to do ohms law. Elements degrade, manufacture material is changed, who knows. Watts is only a idea that was engineered in a lab once apon a time. There’s no sure way to know if you are actually using a “3000 watts.”

[BamaNapper]

TonyN, I have obviously never dealt with the BallistiCast. I got to thinking about your issue last night, hit up YouTube, and thought I'd pop back on with a couple more thoughts.

Your machine appears to have 3 motors, the timing solenoid, and a heating element. I assume the motors are 120V, but the motor in the bottom may be 2 phase, 208V. The heating element is certainly going to be 2 phase. the power into the machine is 2 phase and you're tripping both breakers intermittently. Maybe tripping one more often than the other, but both will trip at times. If I'm understanding correctly so far, then there are assumptions we can make.

The power path for the heating element is through one breaker, through the SSR controlled by the PID, through the element, then back through the other breaker. That means both breakers are carrying the same heater current. For the blower motors, each would only be using one breaker and the neutral. Both motors may be using the same breaker, I can't tell that from YouTube videos and the info I've found online. First conclusion, assuming blower motors are 120V, if one of the blower motors had a short or a bad cap in it, it would only trip one breaker. I think it's a safe assumption that if both breakers are tripping because of the motors you'd be looking at both motors failing in the same manner. The odds are really slim of that.

So my assumption is that it's a 2-phase component that's the problem, and that it's actually drawing about 20A at times. Since the same current for 2-phase motors or heaters has to travel through both breakers, when that current gets high enough it's going to trip the weaker of the two breakers first. One might be a tad weaker and trip more often, but either may trip. The temperature of the breaker is important and either may be warmer. More on that in a bit.

The next clue is that you were running the machine with 15A breakers installed. If it was running with 15A and tripping intermittently, then running with 20A and tripping intermittently, it doesn't sound like something is just slowly going bad. An aging element that is starting to draw enough current to trip a 20A would probably have been tripping a 15A immediately. So I assume your heating element is running along at the expected 12-13A and then jumps over 30A for one reason or another. It could be shorting internally. Or as I replied earlier, maybe it's cycling on/off too quickly.

What if the motor in the bottom is 2 phase? That could also be the culprit. A shorted winding in a 2 phase motor would give you the same tripping breakers as a shorted element, dropping the weaker of the two breakers. If the motor was always drawing a ton of current where it would represent a significant portion of the load, the motor would be very hot. 20A at 208V means 4000+ watts need to be going somewhere. A small motor consuming 2000W is going to melt down in a hurry.

Can you run the furnace without the motors and still trip the breakers? That would isolate it to the element and/or PID.

Since this is a furnace, is there some kind of thermal barrier between the molten lead and the breakers? Most breakers work by excess current heating up the trip mechanism. If you blow hot enough air on a breaker long enough, it will trip regardless of the current. Can the panel holding the breakers be hung free where you can move some air across them? The breakers are sealed so the moving air isn't going to affect their current rating. Most breakers have a temperature rating on them (40C or 100F is typical). If it's mounted in a panel bolted to a pot of molten lead, you may be well above that. Again, I'm not familiar with the machine. I wouldn't be surprised to find out this is the issue. It makes sense. It explains why both the 15 and 20A breakers would act similarly. Actually, I like this one the best.

As far as bad connections, they get a bad rap. Normally a bad connection is loose and corroded, resulting in less current draw, not more. Yes a bad connection on a motor can cause it to start more slowly or slow down and drop the start cap back into play, thus spiking the current. But typically a bad connection is going to show up as burnt insulation on the wire next to it, or discoloration of the terminal or screws. I don't recall ever seeing a bad connection tripping a breaker and I've been working with electrical/electronics for more than 40 yrs.

A clamp on ammeter would be useful. Harbor Freight, $14. You can also get cheap little panel mount ammeters from Amazon that have a toroid you just have to run one of the power wires through. A couple of those mounted at your breakers would let you keep an eye on the current while everything is running. I think they are $10-15 each.

Enough of a rambling. Good luck sir.

[TonyN]

Thanks all.

Sometimes the breaker will trip when the pot is warming up. But mostly when the machine has been running for a while. The breaker get a little warm but not hot.
Like I said sometimes it will go for couple hours then trip once or twice. The one that has been tripping is for the pot I believe. When it trips the PID start to loose temp and they start to cool down.

[BamaNapper]

If you had a schematic for the unit this would be much easier. You mention that the breaker tripping is the one for the pot. The pot almost certainly uses 2 breakers, and I would hope they're ganged. If the pot is only one breaker, the math says that's 2600/120=22 amps. If there's only one 20A breaker it's gonna trip. And typically a PID is powered from the same leg as the load it's controlling. All my assumptions on how this beast is wired are out the window.

[smoked turkey]

Tony I have read most of the posts up to the end. Some I just skimmed over. I think you have received some good electrical advice from a lot of folks here. Fact is that without a schematic or a wiring diagram we are all just shooting in the dark. First and foremost, your nameplate has the specifications of the machine. It specifies a 240 volt connection, 30 amp circuit. Your breakers are trying to tell you something I think. They are your safety net. As one poster mentioned, breakers do go bad sometimes with their inner springs becoming weak due to excessive heat and just plain old wear and tear. But you have changed the breakers in the machine. I do not think upping the amperage on a breaker is addressing the problem and in fact may cause additional problems. I think we have to assume that the machine used to function fine with 15 amp breakers. I believe your machine should have come with a 2 pole, 240 volt, 30 amp circuit breaker. At any rate you didn't mention it but your panel breaker has never tripped. It has always been the breakers internal to your machine. Apparently the main heating element is 2600 watts. Based on that your machine should pull 2600/240=10.8 amperes. Your specifications list another two 150 watt elements. If they are each 240 volts also then the current draw from those are 300/240=1.25 amps. You are also running two heavy duty shaded pole blowers. We know nothing about the current draw on those. There is a drive system, a PID, and other electronics. We know nothing about those either. Lets be basic here and say the machine should have a single cord rated for 30 amperes and plug into a 30 ampere, 240 volt circuit wired with #10 AWG copper. A tong ammeter would help immensely here as it would let you know the current draw. You need to know the total current draw at full load. Apparently the units auxiliary electrical loads cycles on and off and your problem occurs when all the load comes on at the same instant. My take on it is that it is a complex unit with control circuitry that runs it all and there are many variables that come into play making trouble shooting it difficult. Especially on the world wide web. I would be careful in changing breakers and jumping to conclusions. You need someone who can look at the diagram and make measurements on site.