Re: Welder ballast

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

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

Steve,

I'm surprised that you're unable to bring your current draw to less than
54 amps  with your welder's current setting at its lowest (75 amp). I
assume that your running the 240 volt input to your welder in series with
the 240 volt input to your pig and have the welding output terminals from
the welder shorted? I ran this same pig in series with a welder in this
fashion and found that the current draw was quite tame when the welder's 
current selector was set at its lowest setting. As a matter of fact, I 
didn't see
aurrent draw in excess of 50 amps unless I set the current selector to
at least 200 amps. If your are runnign it in this fashion and your current
draw is still over 50 amps, then I'd suggest running it with the welder's
output leads UNSHORTED. I'm sure the current draw would be considerable less
if ran in this fashion.

Also, If your just shorting the pig's output and checking the current
draw on the input side, it will draw more current than in a Tesla coil
configuration since the spark gap will quinch the arc before primary
input currents get very high. It didn't draw near as much current
when firing the coil as it did when I just shorted the outputs of the
pig.

David Rieben

David

----- Original Message -----
From: Tesla list <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
Date: Saturday, January 17, 2004 8:21 pm
Subject: Welder ballast

 > 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
 >
 >
 >