RE: What was that?????

["LOCKWOOD, Chris J." <clockwood-at-orbeng-dot-com.au> (by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>)]

Gomez,

I've never seen a dimmer with 3 wires! In Aus, they only come in the 2 wire
flavour. They work because they are switched off at the zero crossing point
of the cycle (with full line voltage across the terminals). When the line
voltage reaches the +- threshold, determined by the pot setting, the
thyristor fires, and stays on until the next zero-crossing. Thats why you
dont need 3 wires for a simple dimmer. A more complex circuit might have an
internal DC supply (eg for soft-start, etc), which would require the
'ground' connection, since the other two lines are actually both 'hot'...

I'm going to grab a couple of coils, and make a nice jacobs ladder using
bipolar configuration.

Chris

PS- I dont think the scope of the wiring diagram includes ignition coils!


<snip>

>I have to admit, I've never seen a dimmer switch with only two wires.  I
>wonder how it would work, since the power it receives to run itself would
>depend on the size of the load...
----------------------------------------------------------------