Thursday, Aug. 18, 2011 — The UPS man arrived late this afternoon, and dropped off a fairly small package. The way he was carrying it, you would think it was something very valuable or fragile.
My son went to pick up the box and I heard him grunting … the box the UPS dropped off was my new control transformer for the Boatanchor Power Supply I described in my previous entry! I snagged the thing because it was inexpensive; the shipping was more than the price I paid for the transformer — and for good reason: The transformer weights 22 lbs!
When I was looking at the specs for the control transformer, one of those was the “kVa” rating … the one I was looking for was rated at .1 kVa … or 1/10 kVa. The one I bought on eBay was not .1, but 1.0 — with the decimal to the right of the “1”! Now I assumed this would make it heavier duty … I didn’t expect it to quadruple the size and weight as well!
I can kiss the thought of putting this supply in an SB-600 case goodbye if I use this transformer … or it might fit, but none of the other parts would. I went back on eBay to search again, and found several of the “correctly” rated control transformers, and found them to be significantly more expensive than the one I have! Do I increase my costs and then hope to sell this one? Or do I make do with the bargain one and move ahead?
I’m going to move forward, though this one may be going back on eBay eventually. I don’t need one quite that heavy! I’m also going to e-mail the designer for some questions I have on his hand-drawn schematic for clarification on part values. Until then, I’ll keep shopping for parts and/or an enclosure.
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