What's a Mag Amp Transformer Good For - or, Wasting Time and Thought on a Boat Anchor

[unga-unga]

This might be completely un-interesting, but in a lot of old WWII era transformers, I got this hunky UTC transformer that I wasn't sure was useful, and it's been sitting..

About 12 pounds (very dense, amongst potted transformers), here is a photo of it, beer for scale:



And a clearer photo of the very necessary labeling (I would never have figured it out otherwise):



I've read these are constructed differently, intending for saturation, I don't know the voltage and current tolerances, and generally it seems like a silly thing to try to use but... I was still curious to ask if anyone else has tinkered with one for any reason.

I just like wasting my time with junk, okay?? We could tie together the AC coils and have a... pretty decent choke, I guess.

What could I do with this that would be INTERESTING though? I don't think I'm gonna build a radar, or a missle guidance system lol... Are there any real applications for magnetic amplifier circuits in audio? Or do I have something with high current tolerance, that I could abuse as a choke in parafeed or something? I really don't know, but it sure is heavy. Finding schematics for circuits where a transformer like this is used has been difficult. Must be classified...

Nah it's just because nobody is interested in it... No gooble results. And I don't really know what I'm looking for, a magnetic amplifier would usually be a component of a larger circuit, right? And what kind of circuit this came from, I just don't know.

 

[Buck Rogers]

Saturable Core Reactor

I mostly see SCR's used in AC line regulators.

Also used in Magnetic amplifiers, Regulators and for power control.

There appears to be new found interest in Gird scale control.

 

[unga-unga]

After doing some more reading, it eventually sunk-into my dense brain that what makes this object interesting, also makes it useless in the typical applications of coils in audio circuits - blocking AC.

But I did enjoy my learning experience... This was probably the best & most comprehensive article I read, from 1960 Popular Electronics:

Magnetic Amplifiers: How They Work, What They Do, July 1960 Popular Electronics

How many of us have any idea what a magnetic amplifier is or how they work? Very few, I would guess.

www.rfcafe.com

I really don't know what the original application of this unit was, but the context of the other transformers I bought in the lot make me think it was something involved with radio transmission. I might see if anyone teaching high-school physics in my area wants it, or I'll try to give it away at the next ham-fest I go to... I don't know the tolerances etc, but if you wanted to demonstrate mag amps with low-ish voltage and current, I'm sure it would work.

But I pretty quickly convinced myself that there isn't a direct application in audio, outside of mains voltage regulation (which I'm... I don't think that's what this unit was for, at all... Probably high frequency something or other ...)

I probably didn't need to make a whole thread for this, but... Maybe I should post to a ham radio, or even a physics or EE forum, maybe someone somewhere really wants a unit like this. It almost definitely was for a radio device, and I would imagine that such things are ridiculously scarce. Probably dates to the 50's or so, early post war.

 

[audiotemp]

I don't know much about them but have seen them used in SMPS. Also, I remembered that use as an audio amp was possible (though not necessarily practical or desireable). A quick search yielded this circuit,