I have been spinning my wheels for a couple of weeks trying to get and answer that is correct from Nations and DC Power Engineerng about the proper place to get a stator tach signal for the Wakespeed. All I got was pix of the wire connection for the remote drive field.
Does anybody have a clue where the proper connection is for the stator?
I dont kow the DC Power Engineerng alternators specific.
But, if you open the lid on the back of the alternator you wil see 3 thick wires coming out from the alternator going in to the rectifier.
Connecting a wire to any of these wires will give you stator signal.
That is another vote for the place that I also would normally chosen to get a good pulse signal, between stator coil output and diode, but I found quite a few people stating to connect at the center of the "star" of the stator. To me that would be the non diode end of the coil, and that still doens't make a lot of sense to me.
These alternators are quite complex and full of parts as they are 6 phase, 12 diode, 16 pole models. I have 6 wires coming out of the field that go to what looks like two pin test points where the 6 pair up to be 3 before going to diodes which seem to be paired also. It is hairpin wound so the wires are all square in the windings and tightly packe together so hard to sort out compared to normal windings.
I have it connected to location you and I both thought, so testing will show if it is correct, but I bet it is.
There can be many poles, but its still 3 phases. There is really no "middle" phase. They will all give an pulse you can use for pulse to rpm. You can add an diode in series to it.
I think the definitions are kind of sketchy sometimes, as they are with a lot of things. My understanding is that they add phases in clusters of three with the clusters covering 360* so you get 3 pulses per revolution. If they add another cluster it would be 60* offset from the first cluster so you get 6 evenly spaced phases and less ripple from the them.
The people that are talking about the "center of the star" of the stator coils show a circular radial pattern with the 3 coils tied together in the center of the circle and at the circumference. They show the perimeter points going to the diodes inputs. The "center of the circle tie point is where they say to put the pulse sensor.
