I'm in Quebec and the company making the machine is in China. The machine is an industrial sized T-Shirt sublimation machine that does two sided printing. So there's a large heated plate that is pneumatically pressed down on to another equally sized heated plate.
It draws up to 4600 Watts.
I can have it made with 1,2 or 3 phase and 220 Volts.
I'm Montreal and will have this set up in a commercial location that I'm going to start looking for this week, but the Chinese factory needs an answer asap.
I'm actually planning on heating only one of the plates so I told them 110 single phase will be fine, then they told me that even if you're only using a single plate with 110 it probably won't be able to hit the full temperature range.
What I'm afraid of is that if I order this thing with 3 Phase 220 it will be an overkill that I don't need that will limit the number of places that I might be able to rent. Or perhaps seriously jack-up my set up costs and time by needing to have 3 Phase installed in a place that doesn't have it.
I checked and the dryer in my home says 'Heater L1-L2 4.5 KW @ 240V ; 3.4 KW @ 208V' and the 4 prong wall socket it's plugged into says '30A 125/250V'. I know 2 Phase doesn't really exist, but this is what the manufacturing company is referring to when they say 2 Phase right?
Since the rating on my dryer would be sufficient to run my machine (I think), and my dryer is on a normal residential circuit, am I right in assuming that if I ask the manufacturer to do it as 2 Phase 220V then I'll have the most options in terms of locations AND be able to run the machine properly?
I need to get this right and I'm totally out of my element. I really appreciate the help. Thank you so much.