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Re: air ionization and also balancing chokes



Original poster: "by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <Tesla729-at-cs-dot-com>

In a message dated 2/13/02 6:17:56 PM Pacific Standard Time, tesla-at-pupman-dot-com 
writes:

<< I would try to put a volt meter across the variac outputs and try to line
 them up so they put out the same voltage.  If they are made well, you
 should be able to match the voltages up pretty closely which may be all you
 need.
 
 Smoking brushes is "bad"!  But it shows the voltages are pretty out of
 whack and some simple alignment of the variacs so they work right together
 may do wonders.
 
 Cheers,
 
    Terry 
  >>

Terry,all,

I have tried aligning the two variacs the best that they can be aligned.
I loosened both of the collars to which the wipers were attached and 
turned both of the wiper arms to the FULL CCW position and then 
retightened the set screws to secure the wiper arm assemblies on
both variacs. The problem of uneven voltages only occurs when the 
variac(s) are turned to or near the full CCW position (voltage output
minimum). I did build a paralleling choke out of the old bare core of
a gutted MOT. I removed all of the wire out of the MOT and replaced
the wire with two coils of 16 turns of #10 solid insulated wire according
to the instructions for building a parallel choke.  This does improve the
"smoking brushes" problem, however the coils of wire on the choke it-
self now get hot pretty fast, if I turn the variac all the way to the full
CCW position. Like I said, there only seems to be a significant voltage
gradient when the variacs are in the fully CCW position. I guess the 
voltage is quite relatively low but consequently, the amperage would
be quite high :-( Maybe these variacs just don't quite match each other?
They are both GE 280 volt 30 amp units,  but the brush assemblies do
look slightly different. I'm opened for suggestions :-)

David Rieben