Surplus X ray supply takedown

Things at the limits.

Surplus X ray supply takedown

Postby Doug Coulter » Fri Mar 15, 2013 10:46 pm

Bill found a nicely old (and therefore, probably usable) X ray supply. This had 4 large tubes in a bridge, centertapped transformer. We plan to use this for the fusor at some point soon, we hope. First we have to take it apart - at least one of the tubes is broken, so we'll be using solid state rectifiers most likely in real use. He also found a nice video on how to take these apart for refurb. Ours isn't as easy as this one was...ours had 3/4" dents on all four sides that made it hard to get apart. But here's how it goes when it's easy.
http://im40andstilladork.com/2012/10/x- ... amination/

Which gave us a clue. We tried this and it just would not come. The dents. So, holding our breath, we drilled holes in the dents to put a dent puller into. We made that out of a 3/8" bolt and some big washers. Tightening this pulled the dents (mostly). We had to make a special nut (the end of the pictured strip laying diagonally across the thing in the pic) Then we proceed to the banging - from hammers and drifts to air hammers and on down the line. It might take a second come-along to the floor to just pull this apart.
XraySupply.jpg


So, we've managed 6" or so of separation so far. Stay tuned. We got the first bit by making a "pulley puller" type arrangement, using some 3/8" bolts (with special pointy ends to fit into the small screw holes) and nuts under the cover, and by screwing in the bolts forced the thing to separate some.

The reason I said older is better? The newer X ray machines need HF drive, and basically won't hack anything but a short duty cycle - they cheaped out on the iron, and they need a load to not burn up in seconds (back emf loading to reduce the field in the iron). The old ones - old-school, plenty of iron and copper to run all day on plain old 60hz, like we need. We think this is probably one of those just from the weight alone. The tubes are rated 125kv peak and 300 ma (gawd, that's a lotta kw).

upright.jpg


More to come. We just want the transformer out of this one, won't need the tubes or their filament transformers (all 3 of them).
Posting as just me, not as the forum owner. Everything I say is "in my opinion" and YMMV -- which should go for everyone without saying.
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Doug Coulter
 
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