Danfoss TL5F earth short?

[JayeJaye]

Hey there,

So just repaired a bottle cooler, all well, running nicely, go for lunch, come back, tripped. Inspect, nothing to see, reset breaker and immediately pings and fuse blows. Bit odd, so did continuity on compressor, shorted to earth.

Purely for arguments sake, removed protective earth, unit runs absolutely fine, apart from the casing is live. Chills right down, all fans on, everything as you would expect, but with a live earth.

Obviously that was just for elimination purposes, however somehow, compressor is fully functional but shorted to earth. Anyone seen this?!

[Brian_UK]

Remind me not to be anywhere near you when you are testing electrics.

[cadwaladr]

There was a violent blue flash! and we never saw him again?

[Tayters]

Seen compressors to earth and that's as far as I've gone with it.
Depending on how the compressor is damaged you would get different results.
For example, if the windings have burnt then the start and/or run winding may be open circuit and also shorting to earth so nothing will run and case will be live.
If as in your case the live near the terminals I guess, have perhaps some carbon tracking across to the body of the compressor then the windings are all good but obviously some of the live is going elsewhere.

Cheers,
Andy.

[JayeJaye]

To be fair I had to test functionality in order to be able to return with some info, however yeah ok I wouldn’t do it if anyone else was about! But, none the less it’s a return, a lot of the live is going elsewhere, in that all of it is going so either common has gone to earth and the windings are metering that way, or vice versa.

It’s ok though, she won’t be blowing herself up soon!

[JayeJaye]

Still bloody annoying it was only out of the box for a couple of hours!

[cadwaladr]

Dan Foss normally a good product, but where was it manufactured it would be interesting to know,they do care about their quality which is normally top standard.

[JayeJaye]

I’ve sent them an email, and emailed the supplier as well cause I’m on good terms with them, especially as it pretty much did it out of the box. I can only imagine it was a faulty start unit or just that 1 out of 100 that had a problem. Cheers!

[monkey spanners]

Had a rebuilt semi hermetic do that after running over night, went back for warranty and when inspected they found a wire had been pinched during manufacture, heat etc from running finished off the pinched insulation and it shorted out, suspect something similar with your compressor or it would not run.

[JayeJaye]

Had a rebuilt semi hermetic do that after running over night, went back for warranty and when inspected they found a wire had been pinched during manufacture, heat etc from running finished off the pinched insulation and it shorted out, suspect something similar with your compressor or it would not run.

Thanks! I was thinking either a coil or maybe insulation but your history makes a lot more sense!