light bulb current limiter

[Funkalicousgroove]

What size bulb do you use to fire up 100W amps?

[Bob-I]

What size bulb do you use to fire up 100W amps?

Usually 60 watt. Bascially you only want to watch for brightness in the case of excessive power draw so any size will work.

[mhuss]

60 watt is good general purpose (for 120v mains).

If you want to get all geeky, figure out the current, e.g.

60w/120v = 1/2A max

With the lamp in series, neither device is getting full main voltage (unless there's a bad fault in the DUT, in which case the bulb gets most/all of the volts and glows at near-normal brightness).

--mark

[Funkalicousgroove]

Good thing, that's what I ended up using before anyone responded, I guess Great minds think alike!!!

[gearhead]

Are the grounds for the male/female plug ends directly connected in the current limiter?
http://bad-domain/DumbleLite/BuildersGu ... 0Guide.htm

Normsters shows them going to ground (which you should be able to reach thru the male plug ground), but don't know if it's necessary/advanageous to connect to chassis directly.

[mhuss]

I think that's just a drawing convention, there's no need for the mains ground connection to go anywhere except to the "output" socket.

It wouldn't hurt (from a safety point of view) to ground the box as well, if the box is made of metal.

--mark