Wiring the SawStop and Router Wing

I previously gave a tour of my router table installed in the right extension wing of the SawStop PCS.  Also showed how I made the overhead dust collection pipe with a light.  Thing is, between the saw, router, and light, that makes for a lot of power cords going to the machine.  Anyone who knows me knows I don't like cords or cables since I can be amazingly clumsy around them.
I recently took a couple weekends to install conduit in my shop in order to drop a number of 110V and 220V circuits; yes! finally I can run my drum sander without a long extension going into the living room.  I'm not kidding.
One goal of that wiring job was to consolidate the power cords going to the SawStop, router, and light into a single feed.  I'll walk you through what I did in case you find it useful for your situation.  Note that this doesn't presume a SawStop saw; any 220V saw could use this setup.

I'm not an electrician, though I'm comfortable wiring plugs and sockets like this. I'm explaining what I did. If you like the idea, feel free to research it further or hire someone to do similar wiring for you. If you blow something up, well, then, that's a bad start to your day. And it's also not my fault.
Okay, with that out of the way...

Shown here is the drop for the SawStop/Router/Light that we'll now refer to as shtuff.  The drop has 4 wires: ground, neutral (white) and 2 hots (red).  These come from the subpanel I just installed (and will document!).  The two hots come from the two hot buses of the subpanel, neutral from the neutral bus, and ground from the grounding strap.  Even if you are coming from a main panel (not a sub panel), you will need all 4 wires.  The reason I am specifying this is that people may read that a main panel ties ground and neutral together.  You might therefore conclude that you can just run one wire for both.  That assumption would lead to you having a bad (possibly short) day.  In my forthcoming posting about wiring the shop, I'll explain that in much further detail.

The image to the left was actually meticulously drawn on the computer then run through a filter to look like I scribbled it on paper then scanned it.  What this shows is how you form a 110V circuit or a 220V circuit from the two hot and one neutral bus in a panel.  For a 110V circuit, you take a wire from either hot bus and the neutral (neutral goes to the wide blade of a socket; hot to the narrow blade).  For a 220V circuit, you take wires from both hot buses; there is no neutral involved.  Naturally, all receptacles require ground.
The fourth plug configuration in image shows the configuration we are interested in.  Basically all 4 possible wires from a panel are brought to the receptacle.  In the drawing, I showed the plug configuration for a 30A circuit although I ended up using a 20A twistlock format you'll see next...

The 20A twistlock socket is shown to the left with the plug to the right.  I also bought 10' of 4-conductor stranded 12ga wire.  I need 12ga for the current load; four conductors for the four wires (yes, ground should never conduct but "extension cord" wire is ordered this way); stranded because it is more flexible for making this pigtail.

The socket has 4 screw attachments for wiring.  This first side shows a brass screw and a silver screw.  Brass always gets a hot so I'll wire a red hot wire here (either one).  Silver always gets a neutral (think of silver as whitish so it gets the white).  I'll wire the white neutral here.

The other side has the other brass screw for the other red hot wire as well as the ground, which is always green.

Here's a wiring diagram from Ugly's Electrical Reference.  The pencil points to the L14-20R configuration that is the twistlock shown earlier.  I wired the twistlock socket according to the screw colors discussed previously.

Now, on to the pigtail for the shtuff.  The idea is to have the one cable go to the saw and break out our power requirements.  I stripped the insulation from the 4-conductor cable per the plug specs (read the box to know how much insulation to strip and how much to strip from each wire).  Push the wires through and screw them to the correct plug blades.  The plug comes with documentation.  As a hint, that "hot to brass; neutral to silver" storyline comes into play.

The other end of the pigtail goes to a metal 2-gang box.  One side of the box will have a 20A GFCI 110V duplex socket.  The other side, a 20A 220V socket.  The shtuff will plug directly into this box mounted to the router's dust box.  Here you can see the box wired up.  I should have taken more step-by-steps of producing that, so here's some narrative: the GFCI plug is wired with one hot to its brass screw, neutral to the silver screw, and ground to the green grounding lug.  The 220V socket gets a hot to each of its brass screws and ground to the grounding lug.  Notice that I'm not naming wire colors.  The four conductor "extension cord" has a white, black, red, and green "conductor" inside.  I wired neutral to white, ground to green, one hot to red, and the other hot to black.  Likely this will be your case as well, but it is also possible to get other combinations; keep track.  Note that red or black wires are assumed hot unless otherwise labeled in household wiring.

At this point, the wiring is done.  Reverify.  After turning on the breaker for the twistlock receptacle, I used a multimeter to verify all the voltages were correct.  After wiring the pigtail, I verified continuity from the plug blades to where that current should go; I also verified that all the other places did not have continuity.  The multimeter shown here is a $4 meter from Harbor Freight; for continuity, it works well.  It isn't a Fluke, but if you screw up and burn it out, it's basically a Venti Soy Latté out of your pocket.

Lastly, I needed a cover and the configuration with a rectangle and a round isn't typical.  I took a plate with a rectangle and an old-style flip switch opening (small rectangle) and drilled a hole for the round.  This picture is from me doing it to a different cover for elsewhere, but gives the idea.  I screwed a single cover with a round to the cover to drill then used that hole to place a 35mm hole (Euro-hinge Forstner bit) right where I needed it.  Couple seconds of filing to get a perfect fit.

Here's the box surface mounted to the dust box in the router extension wing.  The 110V GFCI receptacle has the router and light powered while the 220V receptacle has the SawStop powered.  All cords are strapped and tucked away under the rear fence rail so nothing for me to trip over!
While this whole process may see long and laborious, it really isn't.  Whenever you run a 220V line for your saw, run a neutral as well and you can easily do this wiring.  Also, this wiring isn't some freak of nature: this is how older dryer drops were wired and how generators are wired.  That I broke it off into separate receptacles on the saw itself is likely the only unique thing.

Here's a way you can save money and time doing this.  For the pigtail, I bought a twistlock plug and the 4-conductor "extension" cord from a commercial electrical supply house.  It was, ahem, pricy.  For half the price and a third the effort, you can buy a 12ga 25' generator extension cable from Harbor Freight shown here.  Cut the cable however many feet you need from the plug-end of the cable.  This is molded cable so stripping the outer insulation back is tricky work with a cutter, but I've done it to literally a dozen extensions.  Once the inner insulated wires are revealed, you just run them to the box on the saw.  I actually would have preferred this route had I realized it first because I like their yellow/black extensions (highly visible); molded insulation like that doesn't get twists in it so easily; the plug is molded onto the wires... no screws and half the size.  Oh, and I paid double for just 10'!
The picture also shows the cover of Ugly's Electrical Reference.  Definitely recommended, but only if you need a reference; it isn't a how-to.

D'uh!-Moment to Improve Dust Collection

Last night, I was edge jointing and ripping 8/4 Walnut to make several handrails; these are rough dimensioning cuts.
I know the TS-75 saw has better dust collection with the D-36 hose vs the usual D-27 "tool" hose due to better air flow, but I had a d'uh moment after the first pass.  That pass left a lot of dust behind and the saw seemed starved for power.
Normally I plug the TS-75 into the CT-22 dust extractor for the automatic turn-on function when starting a tool.  Works great.  Except in this situation, that saw was working much harder than usual with a 12' run of 8/4 Walnut.  With the saw plugged into the extractor, the extractor limits total amperes to 15A.  With the extractor on high and the saw working hard, I was needing 21-22A, but it was still limiting.
Easy solution was to plug the saw into its own source and manually turn on the extractor.  Night and day difference on these passes.  There was literally nothing to clean after ripping the 10" wide by 12' long Walnut into 3 rails.
So, moral is, if your saw (or router) is going to be working much harder than usual, give it its own source!

Renewing a Zero-Clearance Insert

With the New Years weekend, I spent some time in the shop. Wahoo! I have an ugly spot in the laundry room that needs a maple cabinet so that's today's fun along with some handrails.
The cabinet is made of maple ply and hardwood.  For the ply, I really need the zero-clearance insert to keep the cuts clean.  My insert has some chatter marks around the blade opening from who-knows-what and those make for fuzzy cuts.

To remedy this, I taped over the existing cut...

...flipped the insert, loaded the cut with Bondo, and let it cure.  The next day, ran a new kerf through.

While you can't see a lot of Bondo from the top, the cuts are noticeably cleaner.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays

I'd like to wish both of my loyal readers a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.  Hopefully the couple extra days off at this time of year will get you in the shop more :)

Meanwhile, I'll be using my assembly table to "assemble" gift wrapping.  A friend Chris of FlairWoodworks has a very creative post yesterday on how woodworkers should gift wrap.

Stealth Project

I have since completed this project... read this teaser if you like, but then head over to the build post!

Last night a little after midnight, I thought of a nice project to make with a special board I found last week at Woodworkers' Source.  Having (more or less) finally finished a bunch of "shop-tectonics", I could even use bench surfaces for what they were intended to do!

Today, I got started a little after noon and finished a little after midnight.  I streamed the whole time via UStream though I stayed out of any chat rooms or I'd still be at the "lumber selection" step.

I can't explain the project yet as one of my two readers is the lucky (?!) recipient of the project.  At this point, everything is ready for dying then glue-up; one part needs drum sanding, a couple dimensional changes, then a special finish to compensate for its construction.

I'll blog about it on, say, Boxing Day and include photos.  Regrettably, I didn't take a lot of photos along the way of the build, but it isn't that complicated anyway.  Considering the work I have left, it is likely a (full) weekend project, finishing taking more time simply to let the stuff set.

There were notable appearances by the DJ-1, CT-16, and JMPv2.

Stay tuned (literally!)...