Original poster: Steve Conner <steve@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Hi Gerry, David,
I believe a saturable reactor works much the same no matter if the
"knee" of the magnetic material is "hard" or "soft", but hard is
preferable. As far as I know, a saturable reactor works as a phase
angle controlled switch just like a lamp dimmer, and the control
coil bias determines the point in each half-cycle where it flips
from unsaturated to saturated.
I've seen ferrites for HF saturable reactors in a Fair-Rite catalog
and they seem to be designed with a vey hard knee. And a warning not
to operate too near their acoustic resonance frequency in case they shatter :-/
Steve Conner
http://www.scopeboy.com