Thursday, July 23, 2009

how to... use a grill made for 125VAC in europe with 220VAC power

A grill is a resistor... not sensitive to absolute voltage but rather to the Ohm effect from P= U.I
how to easily decrease the power of the 220VAC lines then?
i use a diode resisting to 10 Amps and isolated for 400V mounted on an aluminium sheet. why 10 Amp? the max power of the grill is 750W for 125V so "Imax"= 6 Amp, however, since it is 220 V that i will plug it into, i should expect twice that max intensity.. 12Amp maximum but only for a really short time for each period... there was no cheap 12A diode in the store...

so the diode will avoid to have both the phases of the sinusoide passing through the resistor, thereby decreasing the power to normal use under "1/2 pulsed" 220 VAC



The connections on the pics are rudimentary but safe. The electric isolation of the heat dissiparor will come later. I noted the diode 's heat radiator does not heat up too much which is good :)

and...
IT WORKS!

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