Anybody Know How To Wire A Bridge Rectifier?

[Steve Stube]

Thanks Sparky for looking it up. Ya, I'm sure confused by the location of the + too. I wonder if I would have caught that here on the bench if I were installing it. In the absence of a + sign I look at the terminal orientation for the odd one or a clip form the case. If all else fails check with the ohm meter as Charles mentioned. I will be on the lookout now for this curve I've been thrown.

Tom, if I'm right (a second opinion wouldn't hurt), you will connect one of the AC leads to one blue wire, the other blue lead will then be wired to the bridge. This puts the 120 V AC thremo switch in series with the 120 Volt side. Your motor tag indicates you have such a sw. and that it is 120 V. The blue leads are odd (not the normal bl, wh, or red) and there are two of them so my guess is that one blue lead is wired to one side of the thremo switch inside your motor and the other blue lead comes from the other side of the thermo sw. and back out of the motor. You probably figured it out by now. My time to look in on this board is very limited sometimes - today is one of those days.

[Kurt Aebi]

Sparky,

Nice Catch on the orientation of the legs for that bridge. I was looking through one of the boxes of "junk" that I have brought home from work over the years and have found 10 to 15 of these same mis-marked bridges. My company got these through a wholesaler (Marlin P. Jones). They were marked exactly like the one Tom shows in the picture. I had a note inside the zip-lock bag describing the proper pinnout and it matches what Tom has.

Tom, maybe you want to use a sharpie pen and put your own markings on the body of the bridges you have. (If you are like me - my memory is only as long as my arm)

If you have a multimeter with Diode check, you can verify the bridge configuration and proper polarity.

Any luck with the treadmill motor?
You can use your ohmmeter to check the blue leads and verify the thermo-switch is still intact as if it has "gone off" it will "Open" the circuit to interupt current flow.