On Jan 28, 2:41*pm, "Rob H." wrote:
"Lloyd E. Sponenburgh" lloydspinsidemindspring.com wrote in messagenews:Xns9E7AB3DBA5FD3lloydspmindspringcom@2 16.168.3.70...

"Steve W." fired this volley in news:ihsno1$4pc$1
@speranza.aioe.org:

If it was carbon I would say some form of resistor.

Amen, and again! *That's a dummy load. *But not for long use, with that
case and no cooling apparatus.

Thanks guys, the owner of the device thinks that this is probably correct..

He had a few more questions on it:

- Why a copper case?

It was fabricated by someone comfortable with soldering irons...

- Why are the input terminals red and black; they're both the same?

Possibly one is not insulated from the case, that'd be the 'black'
one.

- Why an inner core of carbon block and an outer core of carbon powder.

The powder makes a better connection to the electrodes and keeps
the assembly from breaking connection.

I'm guessing this was a dump resistor to make a HV capacitor safe;
when working on HV electronics, it's common to use a shorting chain on
a long wood pole as the final step before getting your hands into the
works for maintenance, but sparks are annoying (and molten chain bits
have to be chiseled off the insulators...) so there's usually a slow
discharge resistor. I've seen long vinyl hoses filled with slightly
conductive buffer solutions, with multikilovolt power capacitors.
The likely voltage range for this construction is ~1kV or less.
Calibration and stability aren't important in this use, but
heavy conductors and failsafe conductivity are.