Hey thanks for the response. What if I removed the low end from the core
thereby creating that nasty floating ground, and then grounded it to a
common place with the rest of them system as reference ground; mounting the
actual transformer into a plastic case or on one of those white cutting
boards? The high voltage would have no business trying to arc to the core.
If this seems crazy, and having a floating ground does seem like a terrible
idea if it's not dealt with in another way... But it's been great for
lichtenberg art. The MOT sits in a plastic milk crate and I don't plug it
in until I have both ends of the secondary touching the piece that I want
to burn and attached into cheater pvc pipes. Then step back and plug it in.
It completes the circuit through the wood.
It seems the same would apply to running them in series and not having any
attraction to the cores to be used as a power source for a TC would work
great. I'll say though that the scary little welder I put together in a
pinch is horribly noisy even after packing paper everywhere inside--there's
not much room for anything in there. I don't use it much except for a
display for those who don't realize all the potential lying around in scrap
that is considered trash by some. It looks really bad! ... Even though I
have two MIG welders I used the MOTs to weld themselves together after
holding the cores together with clamps lol. It draws at least thirty amps
with all four going at direct short... ~Rod got stuck and instantly melted
and popped the breaker at the same time.
On Wed, Feb 15, 2023, 8:44 AM jimlux <jimlux@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 2/14/23 8:46 PM, Patrick Tufts wrote:
>
> > Does anyone think it would be beneficial to weld the cores of the MOTs
> > together with one primary and three secondaries stacked together in
> series
> > with layers of mica between them? I did a similar thing to make a cheap
> > welder with four MOTs except I retained all four primaries and they are
> all
> > stacked in parallel, each with separate switches to be able to add more
> > juice if needed and otherwise the unused primary is open, and put as many
> > turns of some quarter inch thick, 3/8" wide ribbon wire on the rest of
> the
> > remaining space-i think I got seventeen wraps and that was incredibly
> > difficult to do around a wooden form, let alone getting it all stuffed
> into
> > the transformer itself! But it works great and usually only takes two or
> > three of the primaries to weld with eighth inch sticks...I still have
> those
> > secondary coils and two more microwaves I haven't rendered yet. That
> would
> > provide more than enough power though!
>
> This is an interesting idea. Insulation, as always, will be the
> challenge on the higher voltage windings. It's not the insulation
> between windings, it's the insulation to the core. The core is at
> ground, so the top of the top winding will be something like 8kV, which
> is a lot more than the voltage withstand of the wire, and maybe the
> bobbin, if there is one.
>
> There's also a core cross section concern - MOTs are pretty "design for
> cheap" so they don't spend any extra on iron. OTOH, with a single
> primary, and the leakage inductance, maybe that limits the total flux,
> so you'll be ok.
>
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