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On 4/10/15 11:56 AM, Steffan Heydon wrote:
Hi Everyone,
This brings me to my next line of thought. I thought about going to
the local iron works and picking up a couple 10 inch lengths of 1.5
inch square stock and using those to wind my own inductors with 14
gage vinyl insulated wire. Question: Will this work?
Not well, A solid bar will have very high losses due to eddy currents.
There's a reason why transformers have thin, insulated laminations.
Question: I do not have a fully equipped machine shop and I'm trying
to do this on a budget. Can anyone provide me with any direction as
to how to best accomplish this?
A bunch of parallel iron rods, or find a surplus transformer and wind
your own windings on it.
Many people use an old "buzz box" arc welder, which has a convenient
adjustable current setting, and the windings already in place.
There are a bunch of posts, at least 10 years ago, on various improvised
ballast core schemes.
But, what current are you trying to limit to. I forget the value, but
just buying a 500 foot spool of house wire and using it as an air core
inductor limits you to some sort of reasonable current.
It's in the archives, as well.
Question: Does such an inductor,
besides limiting current, also limit voltage?
It's a series inductor.. I = E/Z where Z is the total series impedance
of the system. A pole transformer has a very low impedance, so the
current is almost entirely determined by the series ballast.
It doesn't limit voltage, per se, but the voltage on the transformer
will go down as the current goes up, just the same as if the series
impedance were a resistor.