Hi all,
Amongst my "stuff" I found an old Choke / Inductor???.... one winding, approx 6.5 ohms DC resistance, 2.3 kgs ... only marking is Y2/2
What was it used for??
What can I use it for, besides a paperweight??

A choke of that size possibly came out of a large power supply. The choke is a superior filtering device for flattening out various forms of ripple in order to get clean DC. Also early they did not have big capacitors, so the inductor & capacitors were often designed to form an RC filter.

The enemy of the choke became cost, due to the amount of copper & such in it. If its full of copper the recyclers may give you dollars for it?

Photo may be an incite or someone may have a link to the number?

Photo uploaded.

Wow! Cast iron covers, bolted together, air vents, well stacked, chunk of ?bakelite? for a terminal block.
That is a serious piece of 1920's technology.
Wire size looks like amps in rating.
Yes, probably a power supply in some industrial gear.
Nice.

With a construction like that, I would also suggest its continuous rated. I.e. designed to run 24/7 without exceeding something like 50 degrees

Much more attractive than the Volvo truck piston I use as a door stop.

Would likely still work extremely well in a "heavy" duty power supply

Marc

The end caps on that transformer are more like engine blocks than pistons.

Look at the size of that nut and bolt holding it together!!

The Y2/2 marking and the type of terminals would suggest that it is from the power plant in a telephone exchange probably a RAX. There were large chokes associated with the motor generators that charged the battery banks and these worked at 10-20A, 50V so they had to be rather substantial.

Thanks for the responses .....
I have no idea of its history ..... and cannot see myself needing / building a Power Supply with those sort of Specs. I have been using it to hold 'things' flat ... but seems a waste ..... I am open to any ideas.

Easy Ian.

1/ Door stop.

2/ Re-create a whole 1920's radio using huge valves that needs a choke to smooth HT current along with big paper capacitors.
Something about the size of a table I can see in my mind with big tuning coils and condensers and a horn reproducer for the audio.

I'll go away now, 1/ is probably the best.

Fred.

OH...………... 3/ eBay?

Hi Fred,

Number 2 Suggestion: "Re-create a whole 1920's radio ....." ........ for a start, I wasn't sure whether you were joking or not .... ... as I could see you being capable of that ....

Kinda like a Mad Max style 1920's radio .... with those bottle-shaped, shin-high valves glowing ...

Let me know when you start making it and I will drop off the old choke to you ..... (not joking).

There was a Telephone type museum run by an ex PMG guy called Chris Rogers / Rodgers. I have not had contact with him for ages but if he is still around Yackandandah, he may be worth a chat. He was building an exchange as part of the museum.

Agree with Relay Automatic...been part of the output filter from a rather old PMG type battery charger. Had seen many like that in the past in various 24, 48 & 120V DC battery chargers.
Over the years they got modernised a bit till they looked like this one I have in a still functioning 48V 20A DC charger made in 1974 which now tops up my back up 48V battery bank and 3Kw 240V inverter system IF the solar array of 2Kw cannot cope with the load the house applies to it.

First pic is the S/H ex Telecom 20A charger that I had acquired a while back when contemplating using a 48V solar system. It initially never got used and sat in a shed for a while whilst I used a brand new switchmode 10A 48V charger from one of the big Electronics shops which lasted about 10 months & did a dummy spit with sparks shooting out the rear.
Managed to buy the last one available in WA at a throwaway price and that one lasted a bit over 12 months and just STOPPED working .

No circuit available so I dragged the hefty ex Telecom charger from where it was stashed and the moisture had gotten to the meters with BOTH pointers corroded off. Had them fixed and fired her up and it worked in a fashion but not as it should. But having the full handbook as produced for Telecom by Trimax who made this thing was heaven. Delved into its insides and sorted out a couple of seedy transistors.

Re-aligned its overall operation with the aid of a scope as it is a thyristor fired beast and set it up correctly and it has NOT stopped since in just over 4 years.

You Cannot overload it and the float voltage stays exactly where you set it to. If for some reason it does over volt it shuts down and locks out and must be reset manually.
Effectively bullet proof and an example of well made power supply and appears to be quite efficient as well. Made In Australia and not China or Taiwan !!

NOT exactly light though as it must weigh at least 45Kg with a massive power transformer inside and NO Fan cooling it runs barely warm at full output.

The second & third images are the main choke which is very similar to the OP image in post 1.In these you can see evidence of the corrosion that the thing was subjected to and in the second pic to the left is the main transformer..Massive. IF it ever dies the scrap value will be worth it.

Lindsay

Photos uploaded to Post 13.

Lindsay, that's my kind of engineering!

That was the kind of 1960's style stuff I was used to making.
Even though I was very early into pcb's and transistor/SCR technology I still made things with big trannys and a few simple front panel controls. What more did you need?

I avoided the early programmable logic modules (PLC's) like a plague and was making process control switchboards with RELAY logic.
Ten years down the track my panels still worked like clockwork in industrial situations, while the smart PLC brain things had either crashed or the supplier had disappeared! I had NSW and QR rail beg the company I worked in to please make a batch of control panels like in the olden days. That was for standby generators where the gear just HAD TO WORK despite rain, hail, lightning strikes, whatever.

That old plug in relay/timer concept worked so well up to the 1990's then the imported flashy cpu smode card things came in and suited the "use it for a year and update" way firms were starting to operate.
The imported stuff was 1/4 the cost and was just written off each year by the bean counters, no one needed a 20 year life at full rate.

I joined the rest of the Dinosaurs in the graveyard.

Sigh.