New Ballast

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

Original poster: "Gregory Hunter by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <ghunter31014-at-yahoo-dot-com>

Dear List,

After months of daydreaming about a better ballast (my
present setup is two MOTs for a fixed 240V/20A) for my
5kva pole transformer, I hit upon a plan last week.  I
took out an ad in the local "Shopper's Guide", a dinky
little free classified paper, asking anyone with a
broken 240V stick welder to please not throw it away,
but sell it to me.  My grand plan was to rewind it and
make myself a custom ballast.  The paper came out
yesterday, and today I got two phone calls.  One of
them was practically my neighbor.  I drove down to his
house and beheld a neat little "Buzz Box" brand
240V/230A stick welder sitting in his driveway.  The
gent told me he never could make a good weld with it,
and he figured one of the "diodes" was burnt up.  For
$25 bucks I took the welder home, where I quickly
removed the sheetmetal jacket for a hasty appraisal. 
The stick welder has no diodes, of course, nor any
other electronics.  The transformer windings appear to
be in perfect condition.  The adjustment is the
infinitely variable type where the shunts slide in &
out of the core windows like a trombone.  Max primary
current is 48 amps at 20% duty cycle.  The thing is
dusty, and some of the internal copper connections are
green with age.  Otherwise, it appears barely used.  I
can't wait to wire this little jewel up to my pole
xfmr.  I didn't walk away with a free substation like
the geeks seem to be able to do, but I'm well pleased
with my own modest little victory in the fight for
low-budget coiling.  Try the classified ads thing--no
telling what kind of stuff you might pull in--dead
microwave ovens, old welders, old x-ray xfmrs?  Who
knows?

Regards,

Greg
http://hot-streamer-dot-com/greg

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