My mill (WM16 lookalike) was imported into Canada under approval from the local electrical authority rather than CSA because of the low volumes. Part of the approval required that the original 8A fuse be replaced by a 6A component. I have to assume they knew what they were doing but it did make the mill rather sensitive to any slight heavy-handedness, particularly in high-gear, and it became a nuisance replacing fuses (assuming I had one at the critical time).

I considered replacing the fuse with a circuit breaker but then, rather than modify the machine I decided to do that with an external box with two outlets: a local-breaker-protected (6A) outlet for the mill and a separate outlet for the power-feed that I have on the mill. The fuse on the mill was replaced with the original 8A fuse.

This works very well – except under one condition. If the mill breaker trips during a cut with the power-feed, the feed continues for a second or two until I can react enough to turn it off. Usually, the upshot of this is that the force on the cutter rotates the milling head against its locknut and leads to subsequent re-alignment attempts without tearing down the whole setup to do it properly.

What I need is for the electrical outlet for the power-feed to be controlled by the same circuit breaker that protects the mill such that if the mill trips, the power-feed will shut down too. I don't want to directly run both from one circuit breaker since then it would react to the sum of the two (variable) currents. What I think I need is for the mill circuit breaker to also be wired to the coil of a relay whose contacts switch the power-feed outlet.

Is there a better way? Are there any commercially available devices that will do this?

Andy, I don't have any problem with building something like that – just wondered if there was a better way.

…. Well there is (a better way) as Dustin suggested. That would involve modifications to the mill itself though which I'm loath to do. Also, I suspect, Dustin, that both the mill and power-feed are both fed through one fuse or CB in that case, which is not what I want.

I have this "itch" in my brain about somehow using the same kind of zero volt dropout switches (what do we call those?) that the mill uses, externally to the mill somehow. Can't quite formulate it.

Edited By Sid Herbage on 31/05/2013 22:52:36

Sounds interesting, Ed …. could you point me to one?