[sdiy] isolation transformer from a transient supressor

[anthony]

I got this voltage transient supprossor at a flea market that was obviously 
intended for a compy machine since there's a little copy machine icon beside 
the the Ac outlets on the box. I bought it for the box and started to 
desolder the board willy-nilly because there were some nice big 
polypropylene caps on there. I know I don't want the full functionality of 
this suppressor - part of which consists of a relay that switches out the 
power in case of a bad spike, but I became curious about a part on the board 
that at first looked like some sort of choke coil, but upon further 
inspection it looks like a high-current 1:1 isolation transformer. It 
consists of two coils of heavy-guage co-pper strap on each side of a 
recangular laminated core. So I thought about rebuiliding the box partially 
using just the isolation transformer if that is indeed what it is. I thought 
I might either use it to hook up a coupel of my Variacs (Powerstats 
actually) - since those buggers don't isolate the line current - for safer 
testing. It's pretty compact though I may just use it in one of my guitar 
amps that I was going to use 2 transformers in step-down-step-up 
configuration. But if the circuit breaker on the box is any indication - 
this thing can handle 15 amps. More than even a Marshal Major would need.


cheers,
aa