your best bet is to contact the manufacturer fo the dryer. Im not sure if you can get a converter for it or not.

3 phase is terribly expensive to have installed.

Good Luck

 

To upgrade a house to 3 phase is very expensive: they have to partially re-wire. You'll only generally find 3-phase in commercial buildings. Basically you have 110+110+ground.

I have the opposite problem currently: we're moving into a commercial bay with 3-phase but my equipment is 1-phase. We basically made a break-out display that negates the ground wire leaving us with standard 220V.

Contact the manufacturer for sure, you may not need that extra headroom and you may be able to simply swap the head off the cord. Otherwise, hey, I'll buy that dryer off you cheap!

 

There are phase converters out there that will convert single phase voltage to three phase, very expensive. I read a post a few weeks ago on screenprinters.net forums where someone had the same problem you are having and they were able to rewire the unit to work with single phase voltage. You might want to do a search there. Like evryone else suggested, contacting the manufacturer is what you need to do.

 

Hey guys thanks for the advice. I asked my colleague at work today (he used to work for one of the biggest Electricity suppliers over here in UK - Powergen) and he said lots of customers used to ring up asking about three phase power. He said it involves digging up the street pavement and swapping your energy box and also your meter and then rewiring (like a previous poster mentioned) He said the customer has to foot the bill so i assume that would be £5000 minimum. Considering I am starting off in the garage of my rented house which is a brand new build on a beautiful estate I don't think there is a chance in hell! However I have seen converters on Ebay for £100 - £200 . Would this do the trick if the manufacturers say the power cannot be changed?

Also would the manufacturers still offer advice on old products. I have attached a photo of the dryer. I don't know too much about it at the moment until my courier delivers it (delivery has been a fortune in itself) . By the look of it though it looks like its a non commercial small dryer so I would assume that it started out as single phase? What do you think?

Thanks

 

you gotta love wikipedia...
Three-phase electric power - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

and power conversion...
Rotary Phase Converters

and google....
convert 3 phase to single phase - Google Search

 

I searched wiki at the very beginning - see what i meant about being a nuclear physicist to understand it....lol

 

Sometimes it takes a village....

Anyway, 3P power comes in on 3 legs and is used in commercial equipment. The power company here charges more for that type of setup and may even charge a separate 'demand' charge. Basically, you pay for your highest demand in addition to kwh.

Now, suppose you get this converter and run it. What happens? You use electricity. There may come a day when the power company knocks on your door and wants you to convert to a higher rate because of your consumption. Also, your local city officials may frown upon you drawing an 'unfair' amount of utilities compared to your neighbors. I am not sure how you do things in the UK but in the Peoples Republic of California running a business out of a house is legal as long as you do not create business type of traffic including, but not limited to: delivery trucks, commercial equipment, demand for city services, demand for utilities, etc, etc, etc. Of course when you use an unusual amount of power/water in SoCal the local police may give you a visit to see just what might be in your house.

Good luck.

 

When I printed in my basement, I initially had frequent visits from the friendly (not normally in the neighborhood) police chopper with IR sensors...

They quit after a month or so. Guess they detected no plant-life.

 

Ok the dryer has arrived and it looks awesome.... I have been watching on ebay for a cheap converter but they are all £100+

Has anyone heard of a tunnel dryer having three separate plug sockets for one machine - there was one on ebay some time ago and i wondered why it needed three sockets, now I wonder if it was once phase three and they used three sockets to convert it to single phase?


Any Ideas?

 

OK I contacted the manufacturers and he was great, sent me an email with all sketches of which wires to reconnect but sounds like I will have to drill through walls to my mains box and as the house is rented I am still unsure.

This has been in my garage for about 6+ months now so I bought a flash dryer. I will get round to fixing this sometime.

Has anybody else converted a three phase to a single phase?