Today I was searching for a hydraulic pump for my dad and found a big transformer thing i had laying arround: I tought it was a crude homemade AC welder from the 50′s, but upon inspection I found it isn’t even a transformer.  I think it is a big magnetic shunt, maybe to regulate a big welder. Or maybe an autotransformer of some kind.

The wires are all like 4.5mm diameter, made with solid core copper. It has just one winding with 12 taps:

(click to see it in big)

It looks homemade but i can’t really tell beacuse it’s from the 50′s, and by that time things were made like this.

I was going to make a welder, but since it doesn’t have a primary winding i can’t, and i don’t want to rewind the whole thing, so I want YOU to tell me, what would you use this giant magnetic-thing for?

It looks like AWG 5, so it has to stand 50 Amps at 100% duty cycle, what in 220v (standard where i live) are 11Kw.

So drop a comment if you think of something you could use this for!