There is a reason why they call it a ballast. A ballast is a large inductor with a specified impedance to limit how much current is allowed to flow in a circuit.
If the 120 volt cord is glowing red hot, since that cord is getting power from your wall wiring, then your wall wiring would also have been glowing red hot. That is normally prevented by using a simple circuit breaker or fuse in your house's electrical panel. How did you get around that when doing these experiments? Did you bypass the fuse or circuit breaker in your house? I think that would be a major fire hazard.
+Ben Hutchinson If you watch the video "Two Vacuum Motors Burn Out" I show how I get the power. Back then It was 8 gauge wire (in the wall) from a 40 amp breaker supplying the feed. After my last upgrade I am now using 6 gauge wire in the wall with a 100 amp breaker for the feed.
Yeah the plasma in CFLs and fluorescent lights can draw as much as current they can if the current is not limited, this is why they have ballasts in series for limiting the current. As you can see from take 1 to 6, they drew so much current that the MOT gets overloaded and smoke.
@pcblah Yea, I spent a little too much time working with this. Learned a great deal about editing though, and it's much warmer in the computer room than the garage. :-) PS I get my microwaves at Goodwill. Never pay more than $9.99 or wait for 1/2 off sale, or 1.28 sale depending on how long they have been sitting there.
The fire would REALLY be spectacular if that MOT blew out while still in the oven. Guaranteed to light up the sky and really scare the hell out of the neighbors as they wait for the Fire Department to put out a burning house.
I was running on a 40 amp breaker with a power plug in the garage. The wire from the plug was much bigger than the wire I used to hook to the transformer.
You should have immerse the mot in a shoe box full of mineral to cool the transformer down and use an inductive ballast to prevent the mot from exploding
When I first ran them, they were cancelling each other out and the light did not go on at all, so I switched the primaries on one, and then they were definately in phase (that footage was edited out). I did further experements on a later date with that brand and they are so tough I gave up. One of these days soon I'll dust off the rest and try something new with them.
What a spectacular view of the transformer frying like an overcooked slab of meat on a barbecue grill! From 2:30 the transformer heated up, began to smoke, making a smoke screen and then it went ka-boom!
