ACS Vesuvius keeps blowing fuses

danni

Hi everyone! I have an ACS Vesuvius which is acting up. It keeps blowing its fuse, the little glass tube fuse by the power inlet. It doesn’t happen immediately, but the last few fuses I’ve installed have not even lasted a day. Since it’s not right away, it doesn’t sound like anything is short circuited. I am using slow-blow 10 A fuses.

Does anyone know what might cause this? The very first time a fuse blew it melted some of the plastic in there and I had a hard time removing all of the fuse (which broke in my attempts). Would it be worth trying to simply replace the plastic part where the cable connects? Also, why is the fuse even needed? My household sockets are already in 10 A breakers.

DavecUK

Are you in the USA, how old is the machine and when did this start happening?

danni

No, I’m in the EU, with 230 volts. The machine is six years old. It first blew a fuse a few months ago and replacing it seemed to work fine but since then it’s just gotten worse and worse.

I e-mailed Elcor about this and they suggested using 11 A or 12 A fuses. That was a bit hard to find but I bought a pack of 12.5 A fuses off Amazon. We’ll see if that helps.

DavecUK

12.5A should help as your machine in simultaneous mode can draw a fraction more than 10 amps, then any high resistance joints could pull more.

Until you the the new fuses, put it in sequential mode, brew boiler priority. This will prevent boil heating elements being on at once

The fuse melted the receptacle a bit because it would have been close to blowing for an extended period of time.

DavecUK

In fact check the machine over for any connections that look like they have got hot….if it has not done it until recently, there must be a high resistance joint somewhere on the high power side.

Heating element, limit stats, SSR, or even the inlet fuse box connections.

danni

I’ll get the new fuses on Sunday (gotta love Amazon Prime delivery). But it does sound like it could be a good idea to look at all the connections inside the machine to make sure everything is okay.