- #1
baronbob
- 7
- 0
I have a company that makes electrical resistance heaters. We have an application where we are trying to achieve 60 or less watts in a 5' 120VAC heater. The problem we have is that the heating element wires need to be on the order of 24ohms/ft and that ends up being a small gauge wire (ie 40 ga alloy 800). We have half/wave rectified the input voltage with standard diodes that end up delivering 67v RMS and that brings the gauge to a thicker wire. What we would like to achieve is to rectify down to 50 or 40 or 30 Vrms with a two lead device. This reduced voltage would allow us to use thicker wires that are easier to handel. I know nothing about later technology diodes that might clamp or reverse biased the ac wave down to lower levels. This is not homework. I am old and have been out of engineering school for some time.
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