I'm working on an idea I had to save energy costs of a piece of equipment at work. I work in an Injection Molding facility and we utilize Granulators to rework scrap in order to use it again or send it out for re processing. One particular granulator (Which has the biggest motor) is run almost constantly, the process flows as follows; 1. Employee turns on grinder, 2. Scrap is dropped into chute, 3. Employee walks away while parts are ground, 4. Grinder is left on until next time its used or turned off. Because its tucked in the back of the plant its gets forgotten about and may potentially run for hours unattended. The Machine is 460 V Three Phase and the Motor draws about 13 amps, which can end up costings thousands per year.

My Idea is to install some sort of Photo/break Beam eyes to start the motor and trigger a timer that will automatically turn off the motor.

I'm more than capable of hooking a system up with good direction, but I'm not sure how to figure out what I need to accomplish my project.

 

Might keep manual turn on. Is there a location where the output can be monitored ?

 

My original thought was to just go with a timer, and it may still be the best option. I was looking at the sensor both for vanity and for the exceptions to just loading it and walking away. ( I have a temp that from time to time will load the grinder all day long by sitting in a gaylord of scrap, which can cause a problem with having to turn it on every 10 min)

To my knowledge there are no way to monitor output.