Re: Dead pig (fwd)

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2007 23:32:51 -0700 (PDT)
From: J. Aaron Holmes <jaholmes@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Tesla list <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: Dead pig (fwd)

That is really too bad :-(  Getting rid of a dead pig
is one of the few things harder than getting a working
one!  Fixing (rewinding) one will be, for the amateur,
pretty much impossible.  You'd really need the tools
of a transformer maker.  Your time would be better
spent seeking out a new pig.  Let us hope, therefore,
that your pig is not in fact dead.  If you could
explain the circumstances under which your pig
appeared to die, that might help suggest a mode of
failure.  If you have not used a pig before, then as
others have suggested, perhaps you are simply not
familiar with how one uses a pig?  You cannot simply
plug it in and draw arcs, or it will indeed behave
like a short.

I took the windings off a 15kVA unit once, and that
was four solid hours of hacksawing and prying...all my
fingers and knuckles were bleeding when that was over!
 Most pigs are not wound on the E-I cores which come
easily apart.  Instead, they are would on C cores
which are actually formed around the windings (the
windings are wound on a bobbin or mandrel before
hand).  Once the C cores are bent around the windings,
unbending them is extremely difficult.  And feeding
windings through the window(s) would take absolutely
forever and would probably yield sloppy, failure-prone
results, if it worked at all.

A friend of mine destroyed a 25kVA unit, however this
was (I believe) due to the fact that he was
overvolting it by 2x!  Don't do that!

Another friend and former regular of the now-defunct
"allthingstesla.com" forum reported a similar failure,
but then said that, a year later, his pig had risen
from the grave!  My only guess is that the fault
displaced some oil which, after sitting for a year,
managed to seep back in to the fault area and
reinsulate things.  So I guess a few prayers never
hurt either! ;-)

Good luck!

Cheers,
Aaron, N7OE

--- Tesla list <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> 
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2007 12:05:49 -0700 (PDT)
> From: GENE GARRAGE <meangenedog@xxxxxxxxx>
> To: tesla@xxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Dead pig
> 
> I have a shorted big pig .Does anybody know whats in
> there. Could i rewind what ever in there .I have a
> lathe an lots of wire & time. I paid 750 for this
> BIG thing.  tks gene HELP.
> 
> 
>        
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