Saturation:(Was Rebuilding an OBIT)

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "S.Gaeta by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <sgtporky-at-prodigy-dot-net>

> Current doesn't saturate cores, voltage does!  You'll need the same
> number of turns on the primary that you had before.  If you destroyed
> the primary, a conservative rule of thumb is that the number of turns is
> the voltage divided by the cross sectional area of the core in square
> inches.
> Ed

snip

>
> TRANSFORMERS DO NOT SATURATE DUE TO TOO MUCH CURRENT BEING DRAWN !

> -Richie,

Richie and Ed,

Thanks for the info, this is very encouraging news to me!, but unfortunately
it also raises another question:
If current does not saturate cores, why do people have problems with
saturation when they try to use an unmodified variable autotransformer as a
current limiting device? Is some incredibly high voltage developed on the
rest of the winding when only a small part is tapped to allow more current,
or is there some other gremlin at work here?

Thanks,
Sue