eduardo_uk
New Member
the current needs to be anything up to 4amps... 6 amps was a max out and im sorry for getting shirty about it but i thought it would be something simple (which ive since found out it is) the bell runs at about 0.16amps but it can go anywhere up to 5 for a split second if there is any resistance stopping the arm striking the bell. this whole problem was always going to happen no matter what the resistance of the potentiometer itself was as like i said at the point where the wiper is almost at 0 resistance the heat produced is just insane. The answer was to use a rheostat rated at 5amps. just very hard to come by here in the uk but i found one sitting in a car in a scrap yard which worked perfectly... there is a way of doing it with a potentiometer and i guess it might involve putting a resistor between the wiper and the track so that it never really looses it's resistance.. for something where i just needed to adjust the voltage a little it would have worked but i find it hard to believe that such a circuit doesnt already exist that is easy to access... the best place i found was site's that specialse in power unit kits... the plans are easily avaliable in pdf format and you just have to pickup the circuit after the ac has been converted to DC
