Re: Non ballasting a pig?

["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>

If I get a vote, then I vote "no"--do not run it
without a ballast. In my (admittedly limited)
experience, it is a risky thing to do. I was fortunate
enough to be in attendance at the first ever UK
teslathon at Corby. I saw a bloke there run a pole
xfmer coil with no ballast. However, he used a 10,000
RPM ASRG with only 2 flying electrodes. Apparently.
this limited the current adequately. I don't know how
many amps he drew from the wallplug, but the breaker
did not trip, and there was no fire, so he got away
with it. Still, it gave me the creeps--sort of like
watching someone drive a car with no brakes.

I got really poor results with water heater elements.
I ran as much as 9KW of heater elements with my 11KV
pole xfmer, and performance still sucked. I'm not
kidding--1500W of NSTs outperformed my pig when I used
the heater elements. However, a pair of seriesed MOTs
with their secondaries shorted out made a very
effective ballast.

Regards,

--- Tesla list <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com> wrote:
> Original poster: "by way of Terry Fritz
> <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <network-at-neXband-dot-com>
> 
> Hello list,
>    I've been following some posts where ppl are
> talking about what it 
> takes to ballast a pig and was wondering this...
> 
> I recently installed a new breaker box(200amp) in my
> house in which I 
> reserved a 100amp 240v breaker for my shop.  Is it
> possible that this 
> would be enough to power my 7.5kva pig without
> ballasts?  If I still need 
> to, would one 3000w heater element be enough even
> though it's lossy?  I'm 
> not fortunate enough to have a stick welder, just a
> wire welder and the 
> water heater element is handy;)
> 
> Thanks,
> Gregg Adams
> 
> 
> 


=====
Gregory R. Hunter

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