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16 thoughts on “Franlab: saturable reactors and electroluminescent power supplies”
  1. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars GregChase says:

    We plan to use a saturable reactor in its canonical role, which is to pipe DC through a control winding to impose a non-linear alteration of the magnetic core's permeability in order to amplify current.

    Our original device consisted of:
    1) thin sheets of aluminum separated from each other by an insulation – this lamination would be oriented horizontally on the workbench
    2) a strong, axial (through the center) and vertically-oriented magnetic field through the foils lamination
    3) radial electric currents induced in the foils by eddy current coils positioned immediately adjacent to (but not touching) the foils lamination

    We originally piped 16.28Mhz to the eddy current coils to induce the radial currents in the foils lamination. With those radial and horizontally-oriented currents, and the vertical B field, the Lorentz force (right hand rule, recall) imposes coherent accelerations (oscillations) of the charged particles in the foils lamination, at the 16.28Mhz rate (this freq was chosen due to the skin depth of the foil).

    We work at artificial gravity devices. The ability to greatly amplify the induced eddy currents without needing to rely on vacuum tube or semiconductor-based amplifiers is compelling. We are considering integrating ferro layers, perhaps by way of foils or thin film deposition, in the lamination to more directly take advantage of the current amplification.
    .

  2. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars steven gibson says:

    🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

  3. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Markus Strangl says:

    oof.. I thought "electroluminescent power supply" meant that you had blown something up.. 😉

  4. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Richard Smith says:

    It doesn't need to be sinusoidal, just gentle rise and falls of the voltage. This means you can cheat a bit, but I suppose these days a 'true' sine wave would be just as easy as an intentionally sloppy square wave.

  5. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Dalek Caiomhin says:

    "Sandblasting" on (borosilicate) glass can be done nicely with extra fine grade emery cloth strip if it's a glass tube, and another flat sheet of glass and some fine emery cloth. Depending on how fine you want it, start there. 220 is considered the coarse end of medium. Wetordry 400 or 600 can be used wet. Be gentle, and use small pieces of paper at a time, and you can make it all the same ground look. Play with window glass & scrap items first to see what you like. No matter what one you use, it's best done wet. A Steve Miller song comes to mind. The same stuff (emery) is also used as the fine-grinding stage of making telescope objectives. Warning: it can make a mess.
    The inside is best left alone, as the only stuff that'll etch glass will kill you with a drop on the skin or a sniff of the vapors.

  6. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Dalek Caiomhin says:

    I am Like # 666! Woohoo!

  7. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Dalek Caiomhin says:

    I worked in qc (now you hate me) and that stuff is leftover from not having a long enough rinse in clean bath, no second rinse, and no blow-drying system in the dishwasher. That's when everything was on ceramic or epoxy DIP chips, and a computer had a few hundred. I didn't need to use my glasses to see that the part's that filthy. Sloppy manufacture, most certainly! I had maintenance keep with the schedules, and no more dirty parts, and they even ran faster!

  8. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Phineas Rumson says:

    I had a 1962 Chrysler Newport with an electro- luminescent Instrument display. I learned the hard way that they were powered by an HV supply; SURPRISE!

  9. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars NEW - KNOWLEDGE says:

    Components that do nothing ??

    Back in one of the companies that I worked for, the president of the company was upset with the fact that we had lots of components in stock that were never being used, so they were nothing but a loss in money. So he told the guys in engineering to use these components in later projects, and so they did. But there was a catch. If you examined the assembled pcb boards closely, you would see that these components were actually present on the board, but that they were connected absolutely to nothing else on the board. LOL.

  10. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars James Park says:

    Fran, Did you know that the first generation Dodge Charger (66-67) used Electroluminescent lighting for its instrument display? They had a separate power supply in the dash area I believe.

  11. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars K5SM KPT BENCHOD says:

    I bet Fran was hot when she was younger😉

  12. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Anthony Saponaro says:

    You are a hell of a lot more intelligent than I am Fran but I see we have a lot in common as far as things we are interested in . . . I'm about to take a peek at your Setting and regulating pocket watches video next 🙂

  13. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars MANTLEBERG says:

    Hi Fran, this type of transformer was widely used in the cinema industry, in the rectifier power supply, pioneered by "Westinghouse" the effciancy was no ballast coils/resistors were used wasting power in heat generated to supply the carbon arc lamphouses, they were also used in metal plating depositing tanks, lifts, trains, etc, in some installations they fed mercury arc rectifiers, as opposed to compound metal plate stacks, some are still in use today.

  14. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars tom frye says:

    Gotta love flux…until it gloms onto a lot of dust and debris. The contaminants can get conductive. Good
    ol' isopropyl alky 'll wash it away pretty good…but prolly aughtn't use Everclear(8-). <HICK> <BURP>…WHOA!

    'Nuff silliness outta me…Regarding saturable reactors…I always noticed that they don't really consider that
    3rd winding as a secondary. I often heard it refered to and the terciary (tershiary? How ya spell that?) winding.
    That was probably just to keep the jargon leaning the right direction..i.e. This ain't no reg'ler xformer here…
    Core's prolly even a bit different. I'm not remembering. Can ya clue me in, Fran?

  15. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars tom frye says:

    Saturable reactors were quite popular in decades past for controlling the brightness of lights in movie
    theaters and similar venues. Saved a bit of room over alternative apparatus fer sher(8-).

  16. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Clark Magnuson says:

    The first time I designed in a saturable reactor [magnetic amplifier] was a post regulator in a 100 khz forward converter for the general aviation computer for the F16 per my contract with Teledyne in 1986. They still support those power supplies for 3rd world countries using old avionics. Many mag amps are two windings, but I mostly made single winding mag amps.

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