Re: homemade ballasts

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Paul Marshall by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <klugmann-at-hotmail-dot-com>

I use MOT's for ballast in pararllel with their secondaries shorted to the 
core. I can place 4 in Pararllel and get a little over 75 amps at 240v or 
about 18 Kw. They work very well, but with extended run times they will need 
cooling.




>From: "Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
>To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
>Subject: homemade ballasts
>Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2002 07:57:25 -0600
>
>Original poster: "Gregory Peters by way of Terry Fritz 
><twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <s371034-at-student.uq.edu.au>
>
>Hello all,
>
>I have currently been using two welders in parallel to ballast my
>PDT. However, two welders isn't exactly space efficient, so I would
>like to make my own ballast using either an EI core or tube full of
>metal rods. Is there any reason why I can't use stranded pvc
>insulated wire for this purpose? Everyone seems to use solid core
>THHN wire. Firstly, what the heck is THHN? I can't find any reference
>to this type of wire in any Australian catalogues. In any case, other
>than magnet wire, I can't find any solid core wire that is thick
>enough to handle ~50 amps.
>
>Cheers,
>
>Greg.




Paul S. Marshall