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Registered Member #3326
Joined: Sun Oct 17 2010, 09:49PM
Location:
Posts: 8
I am working on the control panel for my Tesla Coil and am having some strange issues with an Ammeter I have in the panel. The Ammeter came with a small transformer that has to be connected to drop the levels for the meter. Currently I have my main power coming in, running through a current limiting inductor that is about 500 feet of 12 guage wire wrapped around a 3" core 12 inches long stuffed full of rebar. The power flows from there to a variac then through the ammeter's transformer, on to the socket that the Tesla Coil's primary transformer plugs in to. To test and make sure everything is working right, I plugged my soldering gun into the socket that will feed the transformer, ran the voltage up to 120 (US Voltage here) and pulled the trigger on my soldering iron which is supposed to draw 2.2 amps. The Ammeter needle moved BACKWARDS! (i.e, dropped below zero to the unnumbered part of the scale.) I tried several other loads, and for some reason the ammeter always moves backwards. Tried swapping the leads going from the transformer to the meter, but that had no effect.
I'm dealing with AC voltage here. How the heck am I moving the meter backwards? An ammeter should only be able to move one way when power is applied correct?
EDIT: I found my problem. My ammeter is a bit more advanced than a standard ammeter. It actually has some control circuitry built in for switching loads. The way I had it wired up, I had the current transformer's secondary connected to the "AC Supply" terminals. The way it is supposed to be wired up is with 120V wired to the AC Supply terminals and the current transformer connected to the "Signal High/Low" terminals. The old fading documentation is a bit misleading. It made me thing the "Signal High/Low" terminals were actually signals for the meter to tell circuitry when the reading was between the high and low points.
Registered Member #480
Joined: Thu Jul 06 2006, 07:08PM
Location: North America
Posts: 644
Alchemist -
It sounds like you may have a "rectifier type" ammeter, which is really a DC meter movement even though the scale may be calibrated in "AC amps". Somewhere between the transformer secondary and the meter there should be a full-wave bridge rectifier. Since your meter is being driven "downscale", simply reverse the leads to the meter and see if it reads correctly. If not, carefully check and see if you can locate a small rectifier module somewhere (may be internal to the meter), and verify that all four of the diodes are good.
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Control Panel Issue [SOLVED]
