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Registered Member #152
Joined: Sun Feb 12 2006, 03:36PM
Location: Czech Rep.
Posts: 3384
J. Aaron Holmes wrote ...
... If your main breaker goes before the breaker on the pig circuit, high voltage spikes can be delivered to your whole house as the pig de-energizes, and other electronic devices may be destroyed as a result.
I have damaged our freezer with two MOTs tripping the breaker and sending a HV pulse through the wiring. This is definately no fun, the spike can be huge and damaging.
Registered Member #8
Joined: Thu Feb 02 2006, 04:34AM
Location: Harlowton, MT, United States
Posts: 214
Given your price range (clearly spending $300 on the pig was no problem) perhaps you could obtain a 240V 50A variac. That way you could soft start/stop the pig as well as control the voltage. For ballast, a welder transformer (which has saturable shunts) in series is a good choice. A welder transformer followed by a step-up (perhaps a second welder), or better yet a 240:240 transformer with saturable shunts (perhaps fabricated from two welder transformers or other transformers cut and joined together) would be most ideal. Again given your price range this is not remotely unfeasible; I have obtained a large welder transformer for $35.
It may also be possible to rig external saturable shunts to the pig somehow, depending on what sections of the core are exposed and how much room you have in the can. A saturable shunt is just a piece within the flux path with laminations that are perpendicular to the core laminations and a DC winding around it that is perpendicular to the core flux. When the shunt winding is unpowered the shunt absorbs flux from the core because the laminations are perpendicular, limiting the primary/secondary current greatly (almost entirely if the shunt has a large enough cross section). If the shunt winding's current is increased, it partially saturates the shunt and its effect is diminished until it is entirely saturated (at which point is is effectively absent). Thus turning up the shunt current effectively turns up the primary/secondary current. Due to the way pigs are normally constructed you probably won't be able to fit any shunts within the core, but perhaps C-shaped external shunts would have an equivalent effect.
Registered Member #1107
Joined: Thu Nov 08 2007, 10:09PM
Location:
Posts: 792
very good i will forget about the insulating gloves and make a nice long chicken stick. For the ballasting i will short the secondary on a large mot for testing and i ordered a 50A variac for $99.
Registered Member #1034
Joined: Sat Sept 29 2007, 12:50PM
Location: Chillicothe, Ohio
Posts: 154
Here is an idea for putting your pig to work. Next time you have a big party and need lots of outdoor lighting you can use the pole pig to run 116 100watt 120 volt light bulbs connected in series. The advantage to using the pig for this is that you only need one wire running from bulb to bulb and it can be as small as 20 gauge steel wire since it only has to carry about .83 amps. The wire and the light bulbs can be suspended above the ground by trees , post , the house and whatever else there is around as long as it makes a complete loop from the pole pig and back to the pole pig. The load comes out to 11.6 kw , a little more than the 10kw ratting but don't worry the pole pig can handle it.
I'm sure you all know what happens with Christmas lights that are connected in sires, if one goes out they all go out. Well that's not a problem here. A broken filament isn't going to stop 14,000 volts.
On the Primary side we are going to be drawing about 48 amps at 240 volts. Not a problem with your 200 amp service but if you keep this going all night you will notice it on your electric bill.
Of course what I'm talking about here would be totally unsafe and I don't recommend it. I just think it is a neat illustration of how using higher voltages can reduce wiring cost. If you where to run the same set of lights hooked in parallel they would draw almost 100 amps. Imagine all the wire you would need to do that.
Registered Member #477
Joined: Tue Jun 20 2006, 11:51PM
Location: Seattle, WA
Posts: 546
teslacoolguy wrote ...
Wee. looks like a solved all my heating problems for my workshop in the winter
Right. Which is one of the reasons why resistive ballasts are often avoided; the efficiency (from a power standpoint) is horrible. From a time/cost/materials standpoint, however, resistive ballasts can be great. My first pig ballast consisted ot two parallel copper pipes in a plastic garbage can full of water. A PVC pipe over one of the copper pipes could be moved to vary the resistance. The water was doped with baking soda until the desired resistance range was achieved. Convection currents and the volume of the water in the garbage can meant that it took quite a while to heat up, but eventually I would have to stop playing and let the water cool. I think I spent about $25 on the whole thing. It was very effective and cheap. I regularly ran it up to 10 and 15 kVA and never found the water heating to be a major issue.
Nowadays I use a big old Luxtrol variac for a ballast.
Registered Member #1107
Joined: Thu Nov 08 2007, 10:09PM
Location:
Posts: 792
RogerInOhio wrote ...
Here is an idea for putting your pig to work. Next time you have a big party and need lots of outdoor lighting you can use the pole pig to run 116 100watt 120 volt light bulbs connected in series. The advantage to using the pig for this is that you only need one wire running from bulb to bulb and it can be as small as 20 gauge steel wire since it only has to carry about .83 amps. The wire and the light bulbs can be suspended above the ground by trees , post , the house and whatever else there is around as long as it makes a complete loop from the pole pig and back to the pole pig. The load comes out to 11.6 kw , a little more than the 10kw ratting but don't worry the pole pig can handle it.
I'm sure you all know what happens with Christmas lights that are connected in sires, if one goes out they all go out. Well that's not a problem here. A broken filament isn't going to stop 14,000 volts.
On the Primary side we are going to be drawing about 48 amps at 240 volts. Not a problem with your 200 amp service but if you keep this going all night you will notice it on your electric bill.
Of course what I'm talking about here would be totally unsafe and I don't recommend it. I just think it is a neat illustration of how using higher voltages can reduce wiring cost. If you where to run the same set of lights hooked in parallel they would draw almost 100 amps. Imagine all the wire you would need to do that.
Roger
Well i do have a birthday party coming in 2 weeks just kidding. I will consider the trash can resistor thing and by any chance do you know what resistence im aming for?
Registered Member #538
Joined: Sun Feb 18 2007, 08:33PM
Location: Finland
Posts: 181
teslacoolguy wrote ...
RogerInOhio wrote ...
Here is an idea for putting your pig to work. Next time you have a big party and need lots of outdoor lighting you can use the pole pig to run 116 100watt 120 volt light bulbs connected in series. The advantage to using the pig for this is that you only need one wire running from bulb to bulb and it can be as small as 20 gauge steel wire since it only has to carry about .83 amps. The wire and the light bulbs can be suspended above the ground by trees , post , the house and whatever else there is around as long as it makes a complete loop from the pole pig and back to the pole pig. The load comes out to 11.6 kw , a little more than the 10kw ratting but don't worry the pole pig can handle it.
I'm sure you all know what happens with Christmas lights that are connected in sires, if one goes out they all go out. Well that's not a problem here. A broken filament isn't going to stop 14,000 volts.
On the Primary side we are going to be drawing about 48 amps at 240 volts. Not a problem with your 200 amp service but if you keep this going all night you will notice it on your electric bill.
Of course what I'm talking about here would be totally unsafe and I don't recommend it. I just think it is a neat illustration of how using higher voltages can reduce wiring cost. If you where to run the same set of lights hooked in parallel they would draw almost 100 amps. Imagine all the wire you would need to do that.
Roger
Well i do have a birthday party coming in 2 weeks just kidding. I will consider the trash can resistor thing and by any chance do you know what resistence im aming for?
Calculating the resistance should be a trivial job, remember Ohm's law...
RogerInOhio wrote ...
I'm sure you all know what happens with Christmas lights that are connected in sires, if one goes out they all go out. Well that's not a problem here. A broken filament isn't going to stop 14,000 volts.
I'm sorry but it doesnt work this way. If a lamp goes open circuit how is it going to suddenly get 14kV over it when loaded it has 110V over it?
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I obtained a pole pig
just kidding. I will consider the trash can resistor thing and by any chance do you know what resistence im aming for?
