Charles Davis spake thus:
Wrong, actually; I've got a garden-variety hardward-store/home-improvement-store-type dimmer running a transformer being used for resistance soldering, and it works just fine, thank you. No sparks, no magic smoke escaping, just smooth voltage control.
Laid a hand on the transformer recently? The problem is that the power out of the 'dimmer' is 'chopped' AC, not a smooth sine wave (like transformers are designed to operate with.) This 'ragged wave form' quasi AC, creates a LOT of waste heat as it tries to drive the magnetic field of the transformer back and forth (the 'back & forth' is what makes the 'transformer' do it's thing.)
If your happy with your usage, fine, more power to you. But it's a situation just crying for a smoking transformer & possibly fire problems.
Chuck Davis
Charles Davis spake thus:
Yes, I think I know how transformers, electromagnetism and sinusiodal waveforms work, thank you.
I am happy, and it works just fine.
By the way, transformers aren't "designed" to work with sine waves only; for instance, the output transformers in audio amplifiers (or in the horizontal output circuit in a TV for that matter) handle everything from square waves to sawtooth waves to whatever else the signal happens to contain.
7 of those puppies will make your control panel pretty toasty. Are these things to control trains? It's a really archaic control method that doesn't move trains very well anyway. You'd do much better with some kind of transistor throttle, if you choose not to go with DCC.
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