Unsmoothed car battery charger - is it crap?

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "daestrom" saying something like:

Would have been a simple job to put in a normal solid state rectifier, just to keep a historically interesting bit of kit working. Otoh, valve rectifiers are still being made in China, afaik.

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "JosephKK" saying something like:

That's a perfectly ordinary home-use 4A charger, of which millions were made. As charging state rose, the current fell and it took ages for the battery to start bubbling, usually a day or so. Still best to have it on a timer, I would agree, but 4 hours per session is nonsense.

In message , Grimly Curmudgeon writes

|Septics, eh ?

They are still being made in a lot of places. Likely just not the one he was wanting.

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I AM PROTEUS

I suspect it was something like a Tungar argon rectifier or a mercury vapor rectifier and not a conventional thermionic diode as is still made today for tube (valve) audio and such. You need something low impedance for a battery charger.

Probably Mercury Vapor. The thing is likely worth more now dead than it was new.

They're certainly still made for supplying the HT to valve amps etc - but for high current low voltage? Wouldn't have thought there was much demand.

All I can remember is that it looked remarkably like a large, old-fashioned, light-bulb. Had a screw-in 'Edison' bulb base as well. The only difference was a single heavy wire also ran to a terminal at the top of the bulb, opposite the base. The terminal entered the glass and ended in a simple, flat plate above the bulb filament.

Remember thinking it was just like I had read in a book on Edison about how he first discovered the 'Edison effect'. That a heated filament would give off electrons to a positively charged plate.

daestrom

See this link

Solid state is more efficient.

Tungar rectifiers are certainly less efficient but they cannot be directly replaced by semiconductors because the voltage drop is much different, several volts for a Tungar and the charger would then produce too hi an output voltage.

John G.

That is why he is called 'dimbulb' or 'Always Wrong', no matter which ignorant nym he trolls with:

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While the 'bulb' shown looks familar, the charger in question didn't come in a box like that. As I recall it hat a rotary snap switch on the front and a circular tapped switch to adjust the charging current and one rather old-fasioned ammeter. Turned it on and checked the current, adjusting the tap to suit.

But that definitly looks like the 'bulb' :-) Thanks for the memory jogger...

daestrom

Diode stacks have bigger drops.

With a forward drop of something like 0.7 volts how many do you need in a stack to get towards the 6 or 7 volts forward drop of a tungar and why would you need a stack to get a reverse voltge of a mere 20 volts.?

John G.

We were having a conversation, not a pissing match, you retarded twit.

There is no conversation possible with you Archie; it's always a pissing match because of your foul mouth. And you are always the one being pissed on.

Are you ready to explain your statement of celibacy yet?

You don't "need" a stack, but if you "need" to drop volts, and you are using a diode, you need a stack, no?

Our HV diodes, though not capable of such currents, dropped as much as