Old Nelson Equipment
- Thread starter MrJLH
- Start date
- Status
- Location
- San Francisco Bay Area, CA, USA
- Occupation
- Electrical Engineer
Why worry about it? Just buy a new 3 phase separately mounted OL relay from your favorite source and wire it in. Nelson was bought by General Signal, who was then bought by OZ Gedney decades ago, who was then bought by Emerson. The only parts of Nelson that Emerson kept are the Heat Trace and Fire Stop products, all else was dumped though the years of changing hands. No support remains for the old stuff.
ATSman
ATSman
- Location
- San Francisco Bay Area
- Occupation
- Electrical Engineer/ Electrical Testing & Controls
or try ebay 
Frank DuVal
Senior Member
- Occupation
- Electrical Contractor, Electrical Engineer
Automationdirect.com for overload relays.
The problem is the starter is in a NEMA 7 enclosure and the client wont open it for fear of an incident. What I need to do is connect a new motor to this starter but my experience with this older type of starter is there is only two overloads on the motor feeders and no protection on the control circuits. I need to prove this to them before I can even think to open the enclosure and none the less make the recommendation to replace it with out proving this to them.
or try ebay
Thanks for the sarcasm! Turned my frown upside down today
I have had to do this before with Sprecher Schuh equipment before.
- Location
- San Francisco Bay Area, CA, USA
- Occupation
- Electrical Engineer
How can you connect a new motor to this starter without opening it?
Proving what to them, that it is no longer legal to use an OL relay with heaters on only two legs? That's in the NEC. They are "grandfathered" in with the old style so long as nothing is changed, but changing the motor is something that usually triggers the loss of that allowance.
- Location
- San Francisco Bay Area, CA, USA
- Occupation
- Electrical Engineer
Oh wait, sorry, I get it now. You BELIEVE you are going to find an old starter with two OL heaters inside, which will stop you from finishing the job because you can't reconnect to it, so you want to know in advance if that's what it will have.
As I recall, Nelson didn't ever make the actual motor starters, I think they used Westinghouse (also gone now but still supported by Eaton). If the motor starter is not older than around 1976, then it's going to have 3 OL heaters in it. See if they have records about when they installed that system. If it was ion the 80s or newer, it's a no brainer. If it is older than 1980 (being conservative here) you could be prepared with a Westinghouse OL relay, I'm pretty sure you can still get them from Eaton as replacement parts. It might be expensive and if you don't use it, make sure you can return it, or just charge them for it anyway as a precautionary expense.
As I recall, Nelson didn't ever make the actual motor starters, I think they used Westinghouse (also gone now but still supported by Eaton). If the motor starter is not older than around 1976, then it's going to have 3 OL heaters in it. See if they have records about when they installed that system. If it was ion the 80s or newer, it's a no brainer. If it is older than 1980 (being conservative here) you could be prepared with a Westinghouse OL relay, I'm pretty sure you can still get them from Eaton as replacement parts. It might be expensive and if you don't use it, make sure you can return it, or just charge them for it anyway as a precautionary expense.
We will be taking a plant outage next year to connect this motor.
Yeah, I have worked round enough of this old style equipment to just know this. Also is the issue of protection of the control circuit which typically is no protected with this older style of equipment.
I have an old drawing that calls out a Nelson starter with a catalog number but ebay and google turn up nothing.
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