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Re: dimmer switches



Original poster: "Terry Fritz" <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>

Hi,

I have never used dimmers but there are a few things I know to watch out for.

Get the biggest wattage you can find.  the higher the wattage the bigger the
traics in them and the tougher they are.

You need to be very careful of voltage spikes.  Maybe get a bunch of MOVs from
Radio Shack to be sure a spike does not blow it up.

One big thing to watch out for is that if the dimmer fails, it will fail in the
100% ON condition.  That could be pretty exciting if you are tuning your coil
or really don't want full power just then...

Variacs are far nicer in that very little can go wrong with them.  But dimmers
are far easier to get.  Maybe someone could figure out a good rock solid dimmer
circuit to replace a variac for at least the lower powered coils...

Cheers,

        Terry


At 04:42 AM 7/4/2001 -0400, you wrote: 
>
> Can anyone tell me if using a 400w dimmer to control a 8000v/50ma neon would 
> do it any harm ?