wiring plug for 3 wire bandsaw to 4 wire receptacle

[Billy Trinh]

I searched forum but mostly found discussions on using 4 wire device on 3 wire receptacle. How do I wire plug for 3 wire device to 4 wire receptacle?
I had a 220v circuit installed with 4 wires using 14-30 receptacle. The saw (513x2) come with 3 wires green, black, and white while the 14-30 plug expects a green, black, red, white. Should I wire it green->green, black->black, white->red and leave the white on the plug empty?

Or do I need to replace the whole receptacle and plug to 3 wire (6-30) and cap the unused neutral?
I want to check with the experts here before i fry anything Thanks!

[John Coloccia]

You can just wire it and leave the neutral disconnected. Is your plug labelled "X,Y,W,G"? You want to go Green->G (that's ground), and the other two go to X&Y (the two hot legs...doesn't matter who goes where). Leave W out as that will be your neutral, which you don't have in this case. If it bothers you to have an unused terminal in the plug, you can always use a 4 wire power cable, hook up the neutral, bring it into the wiring box for the saw and then put a wire cap on the neutral. It's perfectly acceptable to cap off a wire like that. In fact, that's probably what I would do. It will allow you to hook up a light at some point in the future without having to find a 120V outlet to plug it into.

[Mike Cruz]

Billy, my entire shop (the 220 at least) is wired up like what John just said. I was told I HAD to run 4 wire for all 220. So, I did. NONE of the machines that I bought use a 4 wire system. So, I have 4 wires running to the receptical, and I use a 4 wire plug, use the G for ground, the X for black, and the Y for white, leaving the W on the plug empty. While the John is right, you can flip flop the X and Y, I always keep them the same. I can be anal that way...

[Billy Trinh]

Thanks John & Mike! I'll give that a go.

[glenn bradley]

+1 no neutral. The neutral makes it convenient if you want a 110 feed off one of the legs for a light or fan if included with your 220v oven or washer/dryer.

[John Redford]

Reviving an old thread. The only 220 in my garage is on a 50 amp breaker. I am rewiring my 3 wire 18” Rikon which is rated at 12.5 amps. Is this a bad idea?

[Jim Becker]

Reviving an old thread. The only 220 in my garage is on a 50 amp breaker. I am rewiring my 3 wire 18” Rikon which is rated at 12.5 amps. Is this a bad idea?

Not a problem at all to make the machine termination match the recepticle you have available since it's rated for greater than your tool requires.

[John Redford]

Thank you Jim!

[Wade Lippman]

You might consider putting a subpanel on the 50a circuit. While perfectly legal, running 50a to your saw isn't a great idea. If you don't want a subpanel, I would replace the 50a breaker with a 20a.

[Andrew Seemann]

Make sure you match the breaker to the machine, and swap out the 50A as needed. The manual will list what size overcorrect protection it requires. As a guess the Rikon at 12.5 amps is probably expecting a 20A breaker and not a 50A one.

I nearly had a heart attack when i saw that the person who owned the house before me had scabbed the dishwasher into the 3 wire 50A 240V old electric stove iine. The dishwasher would have long since burned down the house before that 50A breaker would have ever tripped. Needless to say that got fixed that day.

[John Redford]

I’m not sure why I should be worried, the breaker is run out to a 4 prong box attached to the exterior brick wall. An extension cord will be run into my garage to the machine. In my mind the worst that can happen is the motor burns up.

[Andrew Seemann]

Or the motor overheats and the extension cord catches fire. In the situation you describe I would definitely want correct overcorrect protection. So will the insurance company.

[John Redford]

The extension cord is rated at 50 amps...

[Andrew Seemann]

That does help. Are the leads to the motor rated for 50A as well? That would be the last leg to worry about (besides the motor burning up).

[Doug Garson]

Any real electricians out there because I think there's some real misinformation in this thread. Breakers are not there to protect the motor, they are there to protect the house wiring. The motor should be protected by its own overload protection not by the circuit breaker in the panel.