My Variac In A Box

This page is the area where I explain some of my projects I am currently working on, as well as those that have been completed in the very recent past but are relevant still. Any questions about them are welcome and can be submitted by way of the feedback page and will be answered in some way or another... This was a fairly simple project. The goal was to construct a cabinet with a handle and a 110VAC cord in and a 110VAC plug out to house a Variac salvaged from RF equipment. The idea of this is to provide a nearly continuous range of adjustment from 0VAC all the way up to about 120% of mains voltage. I'm toying with the idea of hooking up a two-phase power plug instead of the single-phase plug, and then the voltage level for 110V would be about halfway up the scale.

This was the VARIAC in the box, about halfway done.

The VARIAC in a grounded metal cabinet, finally finished. It only weighs a few pounds and is very convenient. It works exactly as it should, and best of all it was free. The original Variac in a box was not powerful enough to deliver high current to my distribution transformer, and the brush in the Variac would get red hot and smoke when I would draw an arc from the secondary. This is the new higher power Variac that I was originally too lazy to remove from some "surplus" equipment. It delivers enough power to blow the breakers, which is not easy to do here at the research building.