New government regulations?

[heisthl]

One of my main transformer suppliers(Mercury Magnetics) has said that due to some new regulation they can no longer manufacture the "ladder type" primaries on power transformers so you could select 100,120,220,230,240 as a source voltage.
He said going forward they can only offer domestic or foreign primaries but nothing that does both. He went on to say that China can still make them and import them here. Makes sense to me NOT

Anyone familiar with this regulation/legislation? I'm guessing it's part of some international trade agreement.

[DonMoose]

I wonder if this is a government regulation or an MM-lawyer-liability-insurance thing because some dink died touching an uncapped ladder terminal and widow sued?

/ unkind? yes. seems plausible, though.

[heisthl]

Well I remember a few months ago Alan Phillips said there was some sort of regulation about not being able to send an amp with a Japanese (100v) tap to Europe.

[paulster]

Paging Alan!

I'd like to know about that, as it seems ridiculous. Not that I'm a fan of tapped primaries at all (I prefer 2x 120V primaries wired in series or parallel) but this has quite some implications.

Can MM not tell you which legislation has forced the change?

[67plexi]

Don’t start about communist china. News flash currency war in action now.
I know I’m breaking the rules but obongo just put a tariff 37% on china goods.
We had 4 full containers full to be shipped from communist china before the tariff
End of story china destroyed the cargo what was the cargo sheet aluminum gee it’s not made in the USA
Anymore.

[David Root]

That makes no sense at all. How can it be illegal for a domestic company to do it when China can import it? That's bullshit, pure and simple.

[ToneMerc]

I'm willing to bet that this doesn't have anything to do with the US vs. China. Why is that style of transformer manufactured, because it's setup for the export market.
What if there's an import restriction into maybe EU countries because some entity said that if you are going to export a PT it has to have a single voltage specific tap.
If the US doesn't have an import restriction then it would make perfectly good sense that China or any other country could still import that style of transformer into the US.

TM

[David Root]

Well that's plausible I guess. More EU nannyism.

[erwin_ve]

C'mon guys leave our beloved EU regulations behind in this discussion If it's true it's sad.

[heisthl]

I will contact Mercury again tomorrow and see if I can get specifics, I did get a response email from them this afternoon that said "the word from our operations manager is we are not going to be able to offer the ladder type PT's. We can offer you the dual primary versions of those PT's or the single 120V version but that is all we can do for you due to the current conforming safety standards that we must now adhere to."

Not sure if "current conforming safety standards" means government regulations or not, but I'll try and find out. I'm assuming a dual primary version will at least allow 120/230 choices when the appropriate switching is employed, but I'll specifically ask about that as well.

[paulster]

They should definitely be able to give you specifics if it's something they're forced to contend with.

A dual primary will still let you do US/European switchable amps using something like this that I use:
[img:200:135]http://img-europe.electrocomponents.com ... 884-01.jpg[/img]
which puts the two 120V primary windings in series or parallel.

It does mean that your B+ will vary depending on where in Europe it's used but then the difference between 220 and 240V countries is pretty much akin to the variation in wall voltage you'll see within the US anyway (110-120V) when scaled up to B+.

It does cause a problem for the Japanese market though.

[heisthl]

Yeah the fuse block I use on most amps let you rotate the block to switch primaries (and the fuse size too)

[DonMoose]

Could you sidestep this my specifying extra 'secondaries' to boost/buck to those non-120/230 values?

No particular reason the ladder has to be on the same winding (I know, no longer a ladder).

[Tonegeek]

I just sent email to Magnetic Components to see if they will be doing the same thing. This should tell us if there is a govt. mandate.

[Structo]

I'll bet it has to do with European consumer electronics safety codes or something.
They are getting so restrictive it's a wonder they can sell anything there.

They didn't have the kinks worked out of non lead solder before they implemented that and they had a lot of failures.
I wonder how many fires were started by faulty soldering.

What's really bad is you know it's coming soon to a neighborhood near you.