Re: Ballast Puzzle

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

Original poster: "by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <Hollmike-at-aol-dot-com>

In a message dated 8/12/01 4:46:38 PM Pacific Daylight Time, tesla-at-pupman-dot-com 
writes: 


>
> Ballasts like this can work well, and can be wound on wood, but don't wind 
> them on any solid piece made of steel or iron!! The rod will act as a 
> shorted turn and generate ALOT of heat, and rob you of much of your power, 
> making your coil vastly innefficient. I saw what happens when you put a 
> steel bolt inside one of these, and then try and take the bolt out after a 
> few second run, OUCH! 



Pardon my ignorance, but I thought transformers will 'reflect' the impedance 
of the secondary back to the primary.  Can one not ballast the secondary side 
of the the transformer to effectively limit the current of the primary?  I 
know this impedance matching is done when driving a speaker from a tube 
amplifier, but how could this be done for TC's(thinking pole pig or similar)? 
  It seems like a resistor placed on the transformer output could ballast the 
transformer without dissipating too much of the power(thinking I^2R losses).   
  Another question springs to mind as well:   If one uses inductive 
ballasting to limit the current(primary of transformer), would power factor 
correction be of use here?   If so, where would  one place the capacitor?   
between the ballast and transformer or 'in front' of the ballast inductor? 
Mike