We still use saturable reactor based battery chargers
with a solid state feedback system for voltage and
current regulation. Still the latest and greatest, most
reliable technology we have in chargers. Not completely
mag amps but same idea.

Our mag amps use all went out years ago. I don't
remember ever having to recal them.

Wow! takes me back a ways...LOL

"daestrom" wrote in
message
...

"Roger" wrote
in message
...
On Wed, 21 Dec 2005 14:29:00 GMT, Matt Whiting

wrote:

George Ghio wrote:

Tell us why anyone would modify a sine wave.

To vary the power delivered to a load. Chopping
off part of a sine wave
cycle is a standard means of power control.


That makes three phase SCR (Silicon controlled
rectifiers and not
saturable core reactors) interesting as chopping
off part of the wave
form develops spikes and harmonics that tend to
make the control of
one phase interact with the others.

I've built a lot of them for single phase control,
but I never once
was able to build one for three phase that didn't
interact. Turn one
up and maybe another would go up, Turn the second
down and the other
two might go up or down. Twas interesting:-))
which is probably why
Saturable core reactors are so popular in industry.
Now there is a
controller that is a tad on the weighty side.


Also, some old systems used self-saturating reactors
(magnetic amplifiers,
'magamps') for instrumentation. Things could take
some severe environments,
but calibration tended to drift a lot. Required
fairly frequent 'trip &
cals' to keep them in spec.

daestrom