As you may have read I have a few nice coffin sets that I wish to build up and have them working. I have recently had a philips battery eliminator ( a 280 rectifier ) and it has half a dozen connections for various B plus outputs. Most of the out puts are above whats required for the sets and I do know when these are connected they will load down to the required power.
The question I have is this! The filement voltages , ie 2 volt, 3volt or 5 volt. How far over voltage can I go?

Hi Carl.
The B eliminator is used to substitute for B batteries.
B batteries supply a suitably high positive voltage for the anodes and some grids.

You require an A eliiminator to power the valve heaters.
A supplies are low voltage, high current, and B supplies are low voltage high current.
Some B eliminators include a C battery eliminator.

It outputs a selection of negative ,with respect to earth, voltage levels.

I have just had my Philips Eliminator rebuilt by a tech friend of mine and I am so looking forward to powering up all my sets. I have sent photos of all my 20s sets and a beautiful Operadio speaker.
I do have a workbench power supply which I may use for the A Battery supply.

Photos uploaded to Post 3.

The Philips 3003 has no regulation. I have one here where I have repainted it as that was a total loss one panel wants another coat. I have not as yet touched the electricals. I made a point of photographing it and forwarding them to Radio Museum as I felt that I could do more justice to it and they deserved better quality pics for this one and they were accepted.

It was made clear that mine was a 240V model which they did not have an example of.

It does make it better to my mind, for all if you have something better, or more original, like one set they had, contained a wrong era tube mod. I had a set, of that model in work, that was correct, so sent images of it. They cannot maintain a site like that, without support and a little bit of philanthropy can enhance this site & valuable resource.

Marc

Marcus that philips eliminator has been totally rewired. One of my friends in W.A specialises in this gear. He decided to leave the original patina though which is cool by me.

Oh and thanks Brad

Mine has two rectifier tubes the paint was too far gone and corrosion was setting in. I therefore had no real option but to treat the corrosion and then colour match it, to internal original paint which actually came up to a known blue colour.

The power cable on mine is of course not original, as it never had one. I have no intention of powering it until I replace every cap as I have every confidence, like the WS19 that turned up that they will leak like sieves, or are perhaps shorted.

https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/philips_high_tension_supply_unit_3003.html

https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/philips_3003.html

Marcc
am I reading that the various voltages are negative? I mean do I attach the negative wire from the radio to the various voltages?

I, as noted have really not studied mine nor used it as there are too many jobs ahead of it the manual of yours, which will be perhaps similar, to mine is also liable to be on "Radio Museum". That's where I got mine.

The US forum quotes plus or minus 20% for voltages, bearing in mind a huge number of their sets & some European ones do not have transformers & with the European ones, what looks like a transformer, may be a ballast.

That means along with auto transformers these have to be treated as" Live Frame" or "Hot chassis"

A 240V "Variac tm" or "Slide Transformer" is unlikely to trip an RCD below 130V on the output side (tried it with a tester 30mA)

Marc

Marcc
My question is this! Would a bench power supply (1 to say 30 volts )have the sort of amperage required to power the filements? I believe mine is 3 amps

Carl,
I believe the answer to your question is yes, most likely. Early UV201 valves had a filament current of 1A at 5 Volts but later (December 22) UV201As only required 0.25A, so a 3A power supply would readily supply the required filament current for your 5 valve set. I would suspect that your sets are all 201As

The comment about negative voltages is unclear.

Most 1920's sets require up to three HT supplies often around +67 for the RF stages, +45V for the detector and +90V for the output stages.
In addition to the filament voltage (6V nominal) a negative bias voltage of around -4V is required to bias the class A output stage(s).
Hope this helps

Joe

The greatest draw for any tube is the filament or heater. The later UX-201-A (01A after 1930, Is indeed rated 0.25A 5V The grid bias is where things come unstuck. Not all of these radio's use "C" (grid bias applied)

As a detector you have to be careful. If the applied plate voltage to a 201A is above 45V (not recommended) it has to be biased. Often a voltage of 22.5V is better. Grid leak 2-5 Megohms average work; 5-9 Megohms for weak signals (RCA) One of the most common "C" batteries on them was a 4.5V cycle battery.

I have mainly due to construction, seen these go into supersonic oscillation with too many volts on the detector tube.

Over 45V Plate.

67.5 V bias 1.5 to 3.0V
90V 3,0 to 45V
112.5 4.5 to 6V
135V 6.0 to 9V

Observation of polarity is important as the grid must be negative, relative to the cathode. Therefore the polarities marked on the set must be adhered too. That is why "B" minus may have "C" positive hooked to it.

The bullet type resistor is normally faulty and if you can get a cap off you can re-core it with a bit of drilling and a more modern resistor. The Mica caps should be tested for electrical leakage, as some early types like that did fail and for value, but more so for value as they can also go open circuit with corrosion.