hot line power being drawn through ground

[BobM3]

A customer sent back a motor for repair claiming it intermittently wouldn't run. We took it apart and found nothing suspect. The only thing we saw was the customer had put his own plug on the cord and had wired it wrong. The hot lead for the motor was connected to the ground of the plug. The ground wire for the motor was hooked up to the nuetral blade of the plug. So, if the customer's receptacle was wired correctly, this motor would have pulled its power through the ground circuit. Would this cause some intermittent operation?

 

[weh3]

It should not have worked at all, the way you describe it.

William

 

[itsmoked]

To summarize...

MOTOR Facility
HOT GROUND
NUET HOT
GRND NUET

Yes, it would be sinking its consumed power to earth.

Yuck! BAD, Bad, bad.

(never mind as a kid I ran a 3hp compressor this way, dirt would steam if wet)

The intermittant-ness could be a lot of things with these inept plug wirers.

Did they wire their facility? <shudder>

 

[jghrist]

No, it would be sinking its consumed power through the equipment grounding conductor. Possibly overheating the grounding conductor and its connections, causing intermittent open circuits or maybe the voltage drop through the undersized return conductor was just too much for reliable operation.

 

[BobM3]

Yes, Itsmoked, you have the summary correct. The motor does run in our plant. It is scary what we see from some of our customers. I'm thinking this guy probably wired the receptacle and there's a bad connection in it.

 

[itsmoked]

If you visit their plant aways note the non-metalic fire exit routes!