FX-6A flashtube availability and data

According to Joseph Gwinn :

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Agreed -- though the knob might have been. I'll know later when it arrives -- if he ever gets in touch with us for shipping fees and the address to send the payment to.

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Yep -- and a lot cheaper than having someone rebuild the existing meter -- even before I lost the hairspring. :-)

I wonder if I'll ever spot that hairspring -- perhaps when cleaning up somewhere. :-)

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This was in the early to mid 1960s, IIRC, so those had a chance of having encountered it in their classes.

Agreed. I think that my isolation transformer is Triad, and IIRC it has a rotary switch to make adjustments to the output voltage to test equipment at slight over-voltage, and slight under-voltage.

O.K. *Which* AC-powered strobe? Not the Strobotach, since it doesn't have an optical shaft angle sensor to start with. Have you started working on something else while I wasn't looking?

Enjoy, DoN.

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I was in High School back then.

I haven't seen that. Does Triad still exist?

Anyway, I'll just use a variac at the input to vary the voltage.

No, it's the rotation-locked one I built for viewing a coil winder in action. Without the transformer, I was flying blind because I couldn't scope anything worthwhile in the line-connected circuitry.

Joe Gwinn

According to Joseph Gwinn :

Sure. They have a web site which does not work properly with Opera on a Sun workstation, but here is the URL:

Mouser carries a lot of their transformers, but they don't stock the isolation transformers so I can't pull down any images to see how they compare to mine. Mine is old enough so it has only a 2-pin jack, and a "cheater-cord" socket for power to the transformer -- which would match what you would expect to find in a TV repair shop anyway. :-)

O.K. That'll do nicely.

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O.K. I remember it now.

Enjoy, DoN.

Yeah. I have seen them. But I wonder if it's really Triad, or a front for Chinese stuff only. I bought a 3-winding "Stancor" audio transformer that claimed to be able to handle 1,000 volts between any two windings, but when I measured the capacitance between windings, it was a few nanofarads between two of them, and 100 picofarads between those two and the other. Hmm. I bet the first two are bifilar wound, and will handle only a few hundred volts, whatever the magnet wire insulation can handle. The datasheet also gave bandwidth and distortion, but failed to specify the power level at which this distortion was achieved. I emailed Stancor, and got an incomprehensible reply: they confounded DC resistance with power, although they did admit that perhaps the 1,000 volts wasn't for all windings. I never got a reply to my email asking for clarification of the unclear parts.

Joe Gwinn

According to Joseph Gwinn :

I don't know -- but you might try digging through their web site, if your browser is happier with it than mine is. Of course -- my isolation transformer is old enough to predate the supposed Chinese takeover. :-)

It sounds as though you hit a marketing guy, not a real tech. :-)

Enjoy, DoN.

It isn't, neither of them, but the problem is at Triad's end - the URLs for the images are bogus.

Yes, but I had the impression that they no longer had any engineers to ask.

The experience makes me reluctant to use Stancor for anything, because I can no longer trust their catalog descriptions. By the way, the audio transformer works perfectly well. The only problem is that it isn't even close to matching its description, or being what I needed, which means that as a builder of one-off projects, every purchase would be a drama. It was not always thus.

Joe Gwinn