Slightly OT: Smoking Transformers

[rdrast]

You should be able to use regular steel hold-downs if you don't run the vertical rods through the center of the transformers. In other words, the OEM setup would have been fine if they would have put the studs in between the transformers instead of inside them.

Brian

Right. Toroidal transformers are great, lighter, higher power density, all that good stuff, BUT if you mount them with a through bolt, and a conductive path from the bottom to the top, you have just created another single-turn secondary, which will be at a very low voltage (depending on the primary turn count), but can be extremely high current.

I use toroidal transformers in that configuration (one turn secondary) and a variac on the front end to generate high currents for testing things. Without too much effort, a 1KVA core can get me about 400 to 500 amps though a single turn secondary.