Toroid ~ grill interaction

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I built a amplifier with 2 toroids 200VA each. As I remember I had had some buzzing problems but they dissapeared after a while,I dont know how and when. Today I fired up my lovely amp and all of a suden the buzzing came back from his planet :)) OMG! what now?.. But I remember of a article here where a diyer said that some appliances interact through the mains and cause the toroids to buzz.

Well, I went to the kitchen full of doubts of this explanation,returned to my room and yes! the buzz disappeard!:))..I made this go and return from kithen to my room several times to be sure,so not to waste your valuable time. The grill is causing buzz.That person said that hair dryers made the toroids to buzz too.

Do you know of some protection circuit to build for this problem?
Thans a lot.Kris
 
Thank for the reply.

I found this comment (Nelson Pass) and several others.
"If you are experiencing mechanical hum from your
transformer, it is often caused by the presence of
DC on the line. Usually this comes from some appliance
using current asymmetrically, such as a lamp dimmer.

The hum comes usually from toroidal transformers, which
saturate easily with DC, and when they recover, they
draw an extra pulse of current, causing the noise.

You can put a pair of back-to-back electrolytics in series
with the AC power line to block this, and it works fine.
Makes sure the current rating of the electrolytics is
high enough, and the they are joined at a like polarity,
such as + to +. "

I'm going to try this first.
 
you must fit a voltage limiter across these DC blocking capacitors.
They are in the mains feed. If something goes wrong you could get 250Vac across these caps. You must put in something to prevent a catastrophe.
A pair of inverse parallel diodes can do the job but thwey must be rated for fault current.
I use a 25A or 35A rectifier bridge that allow hundreds of amps to pass and still generate only a few volts of Vf in either direction.
 
Thus my comment about the circuits not being practical. Wrongly implemented, caps attached to the line can be a significant hazard. I don't think you'll find that solution in very many, if any, commercially offered products. My guess, and its only a guess, is that getting it through UL or CE safety evaluation would be problematic. Personally, I'd just turn off the grill when listening. To paraphrase Clint Eastwood, If you're gonna listen, listen, don't grill.

CH
 
Ok,I put 2 electrolytics from a failed computer PS, 500uf/200V back to back with (+) connected just for testing.The buzzing sound from this appliance dissapeared totaly.Maybe, I'll try something more safe in a separate isolated box with some diodes as in the schematics.Or I'll buy a new grill, either way I use it once in a month :))
 
two 500uF capacitors in series have an equivalent capacitance of 250uF.
At 50Hz the impedance of 250uF is approximately 12.7ohms.

The voltage drop across this capacitance will be enormous if any significant load current is drawn.
You need at least 10 times the capacitance but probably better to scale the capacitance to suit the intended load, rather than guess.

This is directly attached to the mains.
Guessing is not safe!!!!!!!!
 
asymmetric mains waveform is a daily occurrence.
The unequal halfwave areas is equivalent to AC + DC as far as the transformer is concerned.
And it can vary from second to second so that sometimes the DC is added and sometimes it is subtracted depending on what loads are on your spur from the mains 6000Vac or 30000vac transformers.
 
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