OK, back to reality. I just realized there is an off the shelf tool that produces heat with the shorted secondary of a transformer: a pistol grip soldering gun. It probably has about the right wattage for the job. I’ll play around with one and let you all know in a day or three. On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 8:26 AM, Jeff Deutschle <oaronshoulder at gmail.com> wrote: > Paul: > > After yesterday’s pie-in-the-sky engineering I got to thinking about > how many amps might really be required. 120V or 12,000V doesn’t mean > much unless the amperage is high. Nobody ever got electrocuted from a > spark plug, and those are tens of thousands of volts. My thought was > that a ballast already limits current, so why not use it, regardless > of the voltage? > > Today I looked up the rated ampacity of 0.050 wire (about the size of > a center pin) and it is around 6 amps! To heat the pin quickly it > would probably take 15 to 20 amps. Yes, a low voltage is necessary. > The ballast idea is unworkable. > > But then I got to thinking about the skin effect of RF current. > Wouldn't it work better if only the outside surface of the pin were > heated. So what if the procedure could only be done inside of a farady > cage so as not to mess up everybodies cell phone? Minor > inconvienience! > -- Regards, Jeff Deutschle Please address replies to the List. Do not E-mail me privately. Thank You.
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