I have recently mounted a router table extension on my Grizzly cabinet saw and would like to eliminate the router's cord running across the floor to a 110volt outlet. Can I safely install a 110volt outlet using a hot leg and ground from the 220volt service to my saw?
Dude, rewire your TS to include a neutral...
No, it is illegal and unsafe to use a ground as a neutral. If the ground somehow broke, the whole saw would be hot. (It would be hot even if the ground didn't break, but since the ground is a much better conductor than anything else, the current would normally be tiny.)
Someone suggested running a neutral to the TS, but unless there is a neutral in your 240v line (which is very unlikely) that will be impossible. Even then, you would have to replace the cord on the TS to accomodate it.
No.
-- Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)
How come we choose from just two people to run for president and 50 for Miss America?
No. It is illegal and unsafe to use the ground to carry current. You need a real neutral.
It would be easier on breaker/you/firedept if you just run new wire.
By ground does he mean ground or does he mean ground. if he is referring to the ground as in that piece of copper that you expose to pick of improper current, then you don't want to carry current. If he means ground as in Neutral, as in leg three, he could do it but it is not a good idea. just thought we should get things clarified. Electricity is only hard because no one uses proper terms.
Worse than that; in the NEC one is called the groundING conductor and the other is called the groundED conductor.
For an organization that writes the safety standard, you would think they could invent better labels to completely eliminate the ambiguity.
We would never permit that in air traffic control. Well, we did for a long time, but we got over some of it. Tenerife comes immediately to mind. Never use the words "take off" in a transmission that isn't a clearance to take off.
LRod
Master Woodbutcher and seasoned termite
Shamelessly whoring my website since 1999
Then *say* neutral. They are *very* different.
Right on both counts.
- Simpler, as your 220V outlet for the table saw probably doesn't even *have* a neutral.
- Safer, as it leaves you with a perfectly standard configuration. Best not to do anything "weird" in your electrical wiring: it's almost dead certain that some day, someone will find a way to have a problem with it.
How come we choose from just two people to run for president and 50 for Miss America?
Leave it to the government and its partners to make things hard on us. There is a certain sense in referring to both wires as "ground..." which really is only a reference to the fact that as electricity enters it needs a place to exit. In general terms a ground is a means for which electricity exits or "grounds out" yeah confusing. Try teaching a bunch 3,4,5th graders that - isn't actually - but a excess of - that should have been labeled + years ago, and that current doesn't flow "forward" but in reverse.
The NEC is not designed for the layman, but rather the professional. One that cannot distinguish (and understand the difference) between a grounded conductor and a grounding conductor shouldn't be messing with electricity.
BTW - the government has nothing to do with the NEC (National notwithstanding). It is prepared and distributed by the NFPA (National Fire Prevention Association) which is a private organization.
Why do 3,4,5th graders need to know this?
scott
Feh. I've got a degree in electrical engineering. I completely understand the difference between ground and neutral. A daresay better than a lot of yoyos with an electrician's license.
The terms are obtuse, misleading, and confusing.
Much less confusing than the term neutral, that's for sure. A neutral is anything but (what, you mean I can get a shock from the neutral? but I thought it was neutral?).
There is a reason that the other people with degrees in electrical engineering have chosen to use grounded conductor in place of neutral as the term of art, your 'feh' notwithstanding.
scott
And what would that reason be?
Although you assert in a previous post that I didn't reference) that "[t]he NEC is not designed for the layman, but rather the professional," the fact remains that the professionals using it every day are journeyman electricians, and while that doesn't mean they aren't bright individuals, it's not a profession one associates with advanced college degrees. Why tempt fate with nuances?
In any event, the International Civil Aviation Organaztion and the FAA have taken great pains to take blatant ambiguities out of aviation communications and I would venture to say that pilots and controllers are at least as intelligent and well educated as electricians, so why not take the same pains?
I don't care what you think, the labels groundED and groundING for two elements of a potentially deadly electrical circuit with wholly different functions is blatantly ambiguous. And I have >40 years experience with electricity (and >30 with aviation).
LRod
Master Woodbutcher and seasoned termite
Shamelessly whoring my website since 1999
If you want to be correct current doesn't flow. Charge flows and current exists, it is the flow of charge.
RB
Look up corner-grounded delta systems for an example where a grounded conductor is _not_ a neutral.
A journeyman electrician is a professional in the sense I was using the term.
If you think the NFPA hasn't gone to great lengths to remove ambiguity from the NEC, well, I disagree.
I respectfully disagree that -ED and -ING is ambiguous to a professional electrician.
scott
just proving my point exactly :)
I used the word Partner because state, local, etc. Governments adopt the code as law therefore affiliating them with government. It was supposed to be a joke.
as for the 3,4,5th graders. I have taught electricity to that age group before in a 4-H course. I actually didn't go that far with them. If I had taught more advanced electricity (which I never had the opportunity to do) I would have had to get more into that. But they still gave me funny looks when I told them that - wasn't really a lack of electrons but an excess of them making it -.
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