isw wrote:

I recently came across a YouTube video where a guy rewound a microwave
transformer to make a spot welder.

In talking about it, he stated -- and repeated -- that it was very
important for the secondary winding to have the same "sense" as the
primary -- that is, both windings had to go around the core in the same
direction.

I know that matters if the transformer is handling very asymmetric
waveforms such as in a flyback configuration, but I have never heard
that it matters for plain old 60 Hz. sinusoids.

Does it? Or was the guy just confused?


** A spot welding transformer is almost the direct opposite of a microwave oven tranny - big step-down instead of step-up and the lowest possible leakage reactance instead of heaps.

To help with the latter, it could easily be important to wind with the same sense. Also winding multiple, identical secondaries and connecting them in parallel is the way to go plus using other techniques like interleaving and use of strip conductors for the secondary.

Getting 3V at 200Amps is non trivial.


.... Phil