Posted by Sherman in Idaho [72.47.153.163] on Sunday, December 20, 2015 at 14:08:54 :
Got to working on my old bridgeport mill and decided to replace the cord because it was cracked. On the back of the machine somebody had put a rocker-style fusible disconnect box followed by a modern push-button motor starter and overload relay. Opened up the fusible disconnect to remove the cord and thought the fuses looked kind of funny. They're the kind that are about 6" long and 3/4" dia. Looked closer and saw two of them were nice solid brass rods and one was an equally solid steel rod. Not much projection there. I assumed somebody didn't want to bother removing the old disconnect when they added the new one, so I just took the old fuse box off. Opened up the push-button starter and found that the line and load wires were all connected to the "load" side. One phase of the push-button starter was burned up so I guess somebody just decided to bypass it. I'm sure it worked fine in somebody's shop for years that way. But you have to wonder what people are thinking. Maybe they're thinking "Da*n, I gotta get this job out tonight. I'll fix it better tomorrow."