Andrew Gabriel wrote:
In article ,
John Rumm writes:
Sam wrote:
Sorry, what is a snubber circuit?
A circuit that helps dissipate the big spike of voltage that is
generated when you switch an inductive load. At its simplest it can be a
metal oxide varistor suppression type device (cheap at maplin).

A MOV is the wrong device to use for this, as the energy it
absorbs uses it up, until it runs out of capacity to absorb
any more and stops working. It's good for one-shot protection
or a small number of smaller incidents, but not for something
which is routinely expected.

(I was not suggesting it was a particularly good solution - just one
that you see quite commonly used).

I was not aware that MOVs had a particularly limited number of cycles,
or were you just referring a limited energy dissipation per use?

I was thinking of the mains rated devices like:

http://www.maplin.co.uk/module.aspx?...=12m1#overview


--
Cheers,

John.

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