Re: Sewing pedal = Variac??

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

Original poster: "Jason Johnson by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <hvjjohnson13-at-hotmail-dot-com>

Why go to all that trouble? The setup you have just described esentially IS
a variac, minus the iron core. Why not just get a variac? I played without a
variac for quite a while, but then I got one on ebay, and it has made things
alot easier. If you need a variac there are many places you can look for
them, dumps, salvage yards, steel yards, dumpsters, industrial areas etc.
You can get variacs and other great stuff around these places for free or
very cheap. Companies that use any sort of power equipment such as large
motors and heavy machinery have amazing things that they just throw away all
the time (but they might not appreciate you taking it, make friends with a
manager or somenone who knows whats what :-) Ebay is alright, but usually
more expensive, it just takes alot of looking to get stuff cheap. If you
really can't find a variac, then you can make an autotransformer with any
iron core and wire from the home depot. All you need is enough turns to
avoid saturation, and then taps at various places along the winding. All the
dimmer and sewing pedal stuff seems like a very temporary solution to me,
unless you don't  really want to get serious about coiling and run more than
a few hundred watts of power, in which case it is not really necessary to
have a variac.

<<Jason Johnson>>
The Geek Group
G-3 #1129
http://www.thegeekgroup-dot-org/

By the way, I do think that the completely solid state controller is a great
idea, especially for my next coil where I currently have a 200 pound variac
stack to haul around


----- Original Message -----
From: "Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
To: <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
Sent: Monday, July 09, 2001 12:43 AM
Subject: Re: Sewing pedal = Variac??


> Original poster: "Jake Draper by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>"
<cybermecium2-at-home-dot-com>
>
> How about making something like that, but scaling it up and instead of
using
> nichrome wire, use some thick copper wire (8 or 10 AWG) essentially making
your
> own autotransformer, then get a nice hefty piece of tungsten as a movable
> contact, that should be able to stand up to quite some current.
>     -Jake D.
>     <mailto:cybermecium2-at-home-dot-com>cybermecium2-at-home-dot-com
>     http://taradev.cjb-dot-net
>
> -------Original Message-------