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Re: Homemade Trasformer



Ross -

  Yup. What you want is silicon steel core laminations. The surfaces of
the metal are oxidized (sort of like aluminum anodizing) to give them a
bit of insulation / electrical resistance. This prevents or limits eddy
currents in the core. (A low-resistance core acts like a shorted turn to
an extent.)

  You should be able to find the steel sheet and have it cut to your
specs.

  A cheaper route might be to find a dead transformer of the appropriate
size and cannibalize the core laminations.

- Brent




Tesla List wrote:
> 
> Original Poster: ross andrews <sflourine-at-home-dot-com>
> 
>         Hi all,
> 
>         --This is prolly about the thousanth time this has come up on the
list,
> but a few more posts can't hurt--
> 
>         I am thinking of building my own transformer for my coil - not that I
> belive it'll be close to as good as a pig, but want to do it myself
> (yeah, i'm nuts).  I found dad's old EE book and ran the numbers, and I
> should only need 120 turns in the primary to choke the 240V/60hz mains
> current (as long as the core is bigger then 14 in^2), and 6000 or so
> turns in the secondary to give 12 kV.   So far, I have found that the
> biggest problem is the core -- I don't think it can just be a piece of
> barstock b/c it seems like it will saturate really easily -- is this
> right?  Also, eddy current and hysterysis (spelled wrong) are less in a
> laminated core, so I pulled this out of my shorts:  How about using many
> small metal "dowels" and coating them with a sealer of some sort (will
> polyurethane stick to metal??), then sticking them all together.  What
> you have now is a neat little bundle of rods - wrap the primary and
> secondary, then bend the whole mess around a garbage can to form a
> toroidal shaped tranny.  It seems like this should work.  Will it?
> 
>         Any comments apprecited.
> 
>         Thanks,
> 
>         Ross