Pottery Kiln Contactor Replacement

[debtcollectorZA]

Hi Guys,

My wife's pottery kiln is not longer heating up.
Using a clamp meter I ascertained it is not drawing much current as this thing eats electricity and drawing almost 30amp on a single phase when operational.
On further inspection I found than the neutral wire coming from a 24Amp contactor has burned off completely. The contactor is also badly burnt but still clicks.
I am not sure if the under spec'd contactor was the source of the problem or if the wires are a little thin for the current they are supposed to carry.
The palooka who wired this thing ran a single neutral wire to the elements and 2 live wires, so obviously the neutral wire has to carry double the current.
I suspect this was done to convert it from 3 phase to 1 single phase.





The contactor is no longer in production as I need and equivalent but perhaps a little beefier.
In my personal experience the sales people at ACDC and Communica are nothing more than admin clerks with very little knowledge on the stuff they sell.
If you give them the item number they know where to find it in the store room, but they aren't there to give you advise.

Can someone point me to a drop in replacement for this contactor and where best to buy this from.

Thanks
Theo

[Justloadit]

That contactor is rated for a 3KW motor at 230V, which is around 6Amps. The contactor may say 25A continuous, but that is debatable.
You can go to Mantech or any other electrical wholesaler and get a contactor rated at 32A.

[AndyD]

The type of damage visible in the bottom photo is almost always caused by a poor termination. Maybe the wire became loose in the terminal clamp over time. Loose connections mean lot of heat and eventual failure (sometimes causing fire). As per Justloadit, the nature of the load is linear (good power factor) and the form factor of the contactor is standard so any 3-pole contactor with an AC1 rating 25 Amps or above that has a normally open auxilliary contact and a similar voltage coil should be a suitable replacement.

[debtcollectorZA]

Thanks for all the help. I ended up rewiring the whole kiln and replaced the burned contactor with a suitable replacement unit. So far so good. I will only know for sure once the kiln has gone through a full 8 hour firing cycle. I am confident though.