tim9000 said:
And on that note of you saying Z is the slope of the redline intersecting Zero to the curve (post #185), I thought you said that it was the tangent gradient to a point on the curve?
i was taught graphical approach to tube amplifier design so it's what i still use.
Z at any point is the slope of the curve at that curve, which the tangent line shows us.
In this image that we've used before
out at that operating point, load current is set by your lamps because the magamp's Z has collapsed ,
so Z is slope of blue line over the span of yellow current line
about the ratio of red line to yellow line lengths.
What flux is in the core at that operating point ?
Would it be fair to say it sees a DC flux maybe equivalent to what 275 ma of DC current in the load winding would produce? Extrapolate straight down from red spot on graph..
And it sees AC flux of (yellow line)
/ (2√2) rms.
That DC flux really came from DC on the center winding though.
With 840 turns there instead of 200, it took only 275 X 200/840 = 65.5 ma on center leg to make the DC flux. Check my arithmetic.
If center leg was ten ohms that's only 0.65 VDC across it
i don't see any DC voltages that low - if I'm reading your posts right you were WAY out on the curve for most of your readings.
But that's beside the point.
All i wanted to do was cultivate fluency with the V-I (or B-H) graph.
So far we've figured Z at some constrained point on the curve where it's comparatively linear,
In order to operate there something has to constrain our volts or our amps
and the load line demonstrates how that happens.
What if , to understand the magamp's magnetics a little better
i took the magamp with Zload of zero and just subjected it to voltage?
Now only the magamp's inductance would constrain current
and when voltage reached the knee we'd start saturating late in every cycle so current would increase
Calculating Z as the ratio of my voltmeter reading divided by my ammeter reading,
Z should be fairly constant until i reach the knee
where amps begin to skyrocket so my calculated Z goes down.
Maybe it's more intuitive to me because I've done that with
analog meters and a Vatiac, and it makes a real vivid picture when the ammeter pegs for just a teeny tweak of the variac..
Anyhow that's the mental model i was trying to convey with that picture.
you have an AC voltmeter across the magamp and an AC ammeter in series with it
so by dividing their readings you calculate Z.
Now the current will be peaky and a long way from a sinewave, but you'll get a series of readings that plot a curve nonetheless.
And i see you did that.
Is middle graph a plot of your raw volts/amps from left graph?
were lamps connected or disconnected when you took that data ?
Your rightmost post looks almost like a plot of the slope of leftmost plot, which is what it should look like
As of this minute I'm puzzled by rising behavior between 0 and ~35 ma
do you think your core might have a slow liftoff like this mumetal (post 52) ?
trouble is i don't see it in your graph, even at 400%.
we're moving along