I have had different advice on hooking up power to my spindle.

[knight_toolworks]

Shobbot says used a fused breaker one that meets code for your area.
I had some advice from an electrical engineer (hopefully he will come out) saying a breaker is better since when it pops all three legs turn off. Where the fused box one may blow leaving the other two hot and killing the motor.

[richards]

Steve,
This quote from Wikipedia might help explain the use of fuses and breakers that have to control multi-conductor power supplies:

When supplying a branch circuit with more than one live conductor, each live conductor must be protected by a breaker pole. To ensure that all live conductors are interrupted when any pole trips, a "common trip" breaker must be used. These may either contain two or three tripping mechanisms within one case, or for small breakers, may externally tie the poles together via their operating handles. Two pole common trip breakers are common on 120/240 volt systems where 240 volt loads (including major appliances or further distribution boards) span the two out-of-phase live wires. Three pole common trip breakers are typically used to supply three phase power to large motors or further distribution boards.

Circuit breakers with a common 'trip handle' that spans multiple breakers is the least expensive way (normally) to handle multiple conductors, although, you can also find multiple-conductor fused breakers that will trip all conductors if any one fuse blows.

It's good practice to use a circuit breaker that has the same time-delay characteristics as the fuse that is recommended for your equipment. Circuit breakers are normally rated to guarantee 'popping' when the voltage reaches a certain level after a pre-set time. What that means is that a 20A breaker might be able to not 'pop' even when short bursts of 30A current pass through it, but might 'pop' when a sustained load of 17A passes through it for ten minutes. (Contrary to popular belief, a 20A breaker does not mean that 20A can pass through the circuit. It means that 20A cannot pass through the circuit - depending on the time delay, which is similar to a regular fast-blow fuse or a slow-blow fuse. Most house-hold breakers will trip if currents higher that 75% of their rating are sustained.)

[knight_toolworks]

so it sounds like either way is fine. it would save a bit of money just using the breaker since I already have one. sounds like I would have to buy a higher end box to get one that will shut them all off if one fuse blows.