Changing Power Cord on Old Kiln 10-50 to 6-50 - Advice needed

[DHP]

Hello CAN Community!

I have a manual kiln with switches and a kilnsitter - Econokiln (L&L) from the 70's.  It has a NEMA 10-50 cord.  I've recently moved and need to get the 10-50 receptacle put in.  Before doing this, I figured I would look into going digital, so I reached out to a local kiln repair person to see if he could upgrade my kiln to digital using bartlett controller or something similar. He mentioned he has a kilnmaster controller that someone gave him and he would give it to me to use.  The only thing is that it is Nema 6-50.  He said that i can swap out the 10-50 cord and put in a 6-50 one in my kiln since both have 3 wires.  

Can I do this?  I 10-50 have 2 hot and a neutral terminal. 6-50 is 2 hot and a ground terminal.  Ground and neutral are different, so how could this work?  I just don't know anything about this subject.

I appreciate any information you can give me.

[neilestrick]

Change out the old power cord for the 6-50. Any power cord that old probably needs replacing anyway. Install a 6-50 receptacle, and make sure it's wired correctly- 2 hots and a ground. There is no neutral used.

[DHP]

Thanks Neil.  

6-50 CORDS - Are all 6-50 kiln cord sets the same?  In my very uneducated opinion - I think they are - basically they all can handle 60 amps and are rated for high heat.  Paragon, Skutt, to L&L, they all have their own of course. But there is such a disparity on cost.   Right now, I am working on a really tight budget.  I saw a 6-50 cord for Skutt on sale.  Can I get this and install on my old econokiln? 

GROUNDING - I was told that I need to ground the kiln's chassis to an actual earth ground.  How do I do this?  Connect a grounding wire from kiln to water heater?

Thanks!

[Bill Kielb]

1 hour ago, DHP said:

GROUNDING - I was told that I need to ground the kiln's chassis to an actual earth ground.  How do I do this?  Connect a grounding wire from kiln to water heater?

The third wire in your cord will be a ground. In your electric panel there will be a ground bus that connects to an earth ground. Florida has lots of plastic pipe which is non conductive so your water heater contains a green ground wire bonded (Mechanically fastened) to the metal parts of the water heater shell for safety. This green wire runs back to your service panel annd connects to the ground bus in the panel.
All this connection stuff should be common knowledge for most electricians. The green wire needs to run from your kiln and be bonded inside your electric panel to the ground bus. In the case of a residential service it is very common to require that the neutral must be bonded to ground in this panel only. This often leads folks to conclude the neutral and ground are the same. They are not.

In reality, a neutral depends on utility connections so a real earth ground is installed (often ground Rod) and bonded to the neutral in the service panel in the event the utility neutral connection fails.

your kiln needs its ground connected to the ground bus in your service panel

Edited June 9, 2023 by Bill Kielb

[neilestrick]

All 6-50 power cords can handle 50 amps. Prices vary greatly, so get whatever is affordable for you.

As for the ground, your main breaker box should already be grounded, so the ground wire goes from the breaker box to the outlet as one of the 3 wires in the circuit, and from there to the plug and power cord to the kiln body. If your electrical system is hooked up properly, then the kiln will be grounded when you plug it in. Just make sure the ground wire on the power cord is attached to the grounding stud in the kiln control box.