On Feb 18, 4:01*am, "Existential Angst" wrote:
"Robert" wrote in message

...





On Feb 17, 9:24 am, "
wrote:

It's not hard to find discussion of caps as voltage
regulators. *Here's an example, about a third of the
way down in this thread:

http://www.smokstak.com/forum/showthread.php?t=16338

Seems like a pretty crappy thing to find though on a
$3000 generator.

Thanks for the link. *From that thread, I determined that the
keyphrase *I needed to google was "alternator feedback
capacitor".... *That gave me the link to a paper called
"Field Initiation Design Fundamentals for Pulsed Alternators"
which has an abstract giving a short explanation of how
the capacitor works. *This was an IEEE paper.

* It is simply a bootstrap giving feedback to the field of
an alternator....... Not a particularly good regulator, but
sufficient for non precise *applications. * I had never seen
this before, as I had only used electronic regulators to
the field windings of an alternator with a DC field *and not pulsed
alternators.... *Live and learn.....

* Anyway, if the voltage regulation is critical , an
electronic regulator would work far better.

So caps ARE regulators of sorts? *Not just tuning/balancing?

I wonder, if/when I put on this AVR doodad, if the caps should be removed,
or left in place.
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Do you have the Meccalte spec sheet, manual etc for the actual
generator head? That would be my source for
information. Assuming of course that the offered voltage
regulator from the company you bought the assembly
from is using a M voltage regulator on an M generator....
I would think the cap does need to be removed as the
electronic voltage regulator is going to control the
winding field instead of relying on the cap.
generator?