Let's take a look at a new Vault really and see what's inside. I Bought this switch station. unfortunately when I arrived at the plastic and the housing was broken in this and I contacted them and they sent me a complete replacement block for fixing it. but they also sent me a spare as well which was unexpected I wonder if it's a sort of reliability thing or just sometimes they break when they're being put in.

This one went in Okay, but the important thing about this is that it's not just an on off switch in the case of this unit. Here you've got the emergency stop and for a single phase load like a a table. saw the Pearl comes via the emergency stop switch and then goes to this and when you press the button, it turns on. When you press the stop button, it turns it off.

but it's more complicated than just a rocker switch because in the event of a power failure, it will automatically default to off. Its held on magnetically when you press the start button. Let me demonstrate this. So I shall plug in this little setup I've put together with the broken unit.

I Don't feel so bad about taking the broken unit apart, it is serving a greater purpose. So I plug this in no power consumption at the moment. When I press this button here, this is a light over here. you can see it actually activate.

When I press this button, there's a distinct click and the light comes on. When you press the stop button, it goes off. But listen to this. When I press the start button and I very gently press the stop button.

Did you hear that buzzing? It's very interesting the way this works. Let me unplug this and we shall open this up. So just put this stuff out the way. I'll try and pull these off without completely.

It is actually disintegrating. but that's okay. Maybe I'll just actually leave it with the wires on then. So if I open this up now, where is a screwdriver? So I can prize it open If I just hook us under here.

If I open up, you can see the two button actuators pressing down on this rocking plate here and these Springs are the ones that actually push the contacts down. When you actually press the start button, there's a coil under here and it pushes the keeper plate down onto the coil and also Bridges the contacts when the contacts are bridge that energizes the coil and that's what holds it in a locked State Let me get down there so you can see this closer. So here is the coil. The plate gets pushed down and then when you press the stop button, it actually doesn't just break that by pushing the keeper plate off the magnet, but it also forces the contacts open so even if they'd welded, it should actually force them completely open.

Now if I remove the the plate here the actuator plate, which is a little tongue that goes into the actuator rod I'll take these Springs out as well. We can see the coil here has this unusual copper plate across the pole, the central pole of the core of the magnet that is a shaded pull assembly. What that does is that because this is being run in AC to reduce the buzzing, it causes a slight phase shift magnetically and it just basically it rides over the zero crossing point so you don't get such a loud buzz off it. It may hum quietly, but it's not going to be as bad as if it was a just a bare core.

Um, let's see if I can get this further apart. I may have to and will I have to take these off and maybe try and push the contacts out. We can take a closer look one moment, please. The speed terminals are off.

I'm just going to push this out on camera just in case everything goes horribly wrong. We do like it when things go horribly wrong and it just means I'll be able to see what other stuff came out in. Is this going to come out easily? Um, so are these going to come out easily enough? Oh, are they just friction fit down the side of the uh solenoid connection? The magnet connections I think they are. So here's a contact: I think it's rated up to about 60.

Now that's when it's got fairly beefy uh ribbed copper with a plating on them on the front. It's got copper contacts with a sort of a slight patterning in the front and the coil does just have a let me see if we can get this out now. Is this going to come out? It is. So the coil has the two connections come up here and then it's got the wires bent down the side and they actually went down the side of the contacts and just basically touched against them.

It's a friction fit and here's the block with the other contacts that Bridges between the two sides and it's got a spring in it to make sure that, uh, when they go up it, they sort of level off and bounce off. Okay, and that's the system there that when you push it down, it's literally going to force those contacts. It's going to push them away from these other ones, but there are. It does mean that there's actually two contacts, two pairs of contacts in each path that's quite solid, but this is, uh, excuse this pack of silica gel.

Not sure where that came from. Uh, but the I Like the fact that when you push the stop button, it isn't just breaking electrical connection to that coil, it's actually forcing the circuit back open and in doing so, breaking the connection to that coil and releasing it I Measured the power consumption of this, it was three Watts or three volt amps. Since it is inductive I'll share with that hot that will get in use I Didn't leave it running for too long, but it is designed for a fairly long useless at a factory environment, but that's basically what's inside these and do reiterating the operation here. The main point of this is this complex assembly is to make sure that if you've got to see a table saw running and you press the start button, the table saw is running and then the power goes off when it starts.

When the power comes back again, it won't just immediately start running again with nobody present. You actually have to press this to reset it and that is it. a No. Vault Really very, very common in electrical equipment.

In the case of Um three-phase equipment, you may find this is done with the contactor an auxiliary contact. So when you push the button, it uh, brings a contactor in, but the contactor then powers itself and uh, the stop button in that instance usually does just break the control circuit to that and let the contactor drop out, but that is it. A basic simple No. Vault relay.