Re: Welder ballast

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

Original poster: Gregory Hunter <ghunter31014-at-yahoo-dot-com> 

Are you shorting the welder leads together? Try
leaving the welder leads open-circuit. This should cut
the current down considerably. I can run my 5KVA pig
at as little as 7A this way.

Also, how are you doing your measuring? If you try to
measure 240vac current using a regular clamp-on
ammeter while the TC is running, you'll get unreliable
readings. Try shorting your HV pig outputs together
and measure the short-circuit current on the 240vac
side. You can also short out the pig HV bushings with
a regular DMM on AC ammeter function and read the
short-circuit current that way. This will give you a
more reasonable picture of how your ballast is
performing.

Regards,

--- Tesla list <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com> wrote:
 > Original poster: "steve" <steve_vance-at-cablelynx-dot-com>
 >
 >
 > I broke down and bought a 225A stick welder to
 > ballast my 10KVA pig with.
 > I thought it would be the simplest way. Problem is,
 > on the lowest setting, in
 > series with my pig it draws 54 amps. That's more
 > than I was hoping for. I'm
 > not quite sure how to figure out how much of this
 > power is being put into
 > the pig.
 > I would like to get down to about 3-5KVA.
 >
 > I would appreciate any help or suggestions that
 > anyone might have.
 >
 > Steve Vance
 >
 >


=====
Gregory R. Hunter

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

_