Re: Variac Ballast?????

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

Original poster: DRIEBEN-at-midsouth.rr-dot-com 

Adam,

The better duty cycle was the main reason. Mine was one
of the newer ones with aluminum windings and it was ac-
tually amazingly "cheap" looking inside. It was the same
setup that I was firing my big coil with and, oddly enough,
I never had any overheating problems when I was driving
my coil with it. It seems that running 83 nFD at 300 to
350 bps didn't really require a relatively large amount
of RMS current. However, when I just use it to drive a
Jacob's ladder, it gets quite warm (as in hot smelling!)
within a couple of minutes of running. Of course I never
ran it for more than 30 to 60 seconds tops at a time when
firing the big coil with it either. Anyway, the oil sub-
mertion really helped out with the overheating problem.
BTW, the welder is only rated at its max output with on-
ly a 20% duty cycle. I'm not really much of a welder any-
way and I like the idea of a "dedicated" ballast for my
power supply :^))

David Rieben

----- Original Message -----
From: Tesla list <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
Date: Thursday, April 8, 2004 7:59 pm
Subject: Re: Variac Ballast?????

 > Original poster: Yurtle Turtle <yurtle_t-at-yahoo-dot-com>
 >
 > Did you "gut" your welder for any particular reason? I
 > also have a Lincoln 225. Mine's old enough to have
 > copper windings. I've heard the newer ones are
 > aluminum. Mine started flashing over internally, but I
 > couldn't stand to lose the ability to conveniently
 > roll it somewhere and weld. I guess you could get a
 > better duty cycle out of an oil submerged
 > welder/ballast.
 >
 > Adam
 >
 > --- Tesla list <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com> wrote:
 > > Original poster: DRIEBEN-at-midsouth.rr-dot-com
 > >
 > <snip>
 > > Right now it's just driving a
 > > Jacob's ladder and
 > > ballasted by a 225 amp Lincoln stick welder whose
 > > guts were taken out
 > > of the red metal frame and submerged in 4 gallons of
 > > SAE-30 non-deter-
 > > gent motor inside a plastic files organizer box from
 > > the stationary
 > > section of Walmart. I was even able to mount the
 > > amperage selector
 > > knob switch in the plastic lid of the box and can
 > > use this to control
 > > the input to the transformer. It's an almost perfect
 > > fit ;^)
 > >
 > > David Rieben
 > >
 >
 >
 >