Originally Posted by
bob hertle
Purpose of the bleeder resistor, on a capacitor start motor, is to bleed off the charge on the capacitor before shutting off the motor. When the centrifugal switch contacts close on spindown, the cap, if still charged, will dump its charge across the windings causing (sometimes violent) shudder. Baldor engineering recommended to me, 200 ohm, 20 watt wirewound resistor. 15 K ohm sounds high and if you start and stop frequently, the time constant resulting from the 15 k ohm may be too long to fully discharge the cap. I may be full of it though, so I'll defer to any electrical engineers on the forum! I can tell you that I have (2) 1.5HP Baldors, running with the 200 ohm for about 15 years with no problems other than one replaced capacitor. Another useful trick to get rid of the shudder, is to utilize a switch with an extra pole or set of contacts, and switch the line between the capacitor and the start winding. ================================================== ================================================== ==============================
Bob