Jinx,

On Tue, 17 May 2005 23:08:19 +1200, Jinx wrote:

> Ah-ha, Block nailed it. Yes, I'm a complete ****ing 
idiot and mixed
> up Primary and Secondary
> 
> Not

ROFL!

If you'd connected mains to the secondary, there would 
have been a bery loud Bang! and you wouldn't have had a 
chance to look at any waveforms (three guesses how I 
know this! :-)

I think the size of the thing is what's causing the 
problems - magnetics get very inefficient at small sizes 
(it's been said that if we were a tenth of our size we 
would live with very different technology because motors 
and generators wouldn't be feasible for a lot of what we 
do at that size).  

The waveform is a dead giveaway - if it's not a sine 
wave with an open or resistive load, the core is 
saturating and the extra energy (in the area between the 
actual curve and the sine it should be) is being 
dissipated as heat.

I'm a tad surprised they say it'll cool down when you 
give it a load - my electromagnetics knowledge isn't 
very good, and I can't quite fathom how loading the 
secondary would reduce the magnetic flux in the core... 
does the secondary "absorb" it somehow?

Cheers,


Howard Winter
St.Albans, England


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