lighted sigh transformers

got a truck load of transformers not my first load first load i busted out with old ax saw and hammer and various instrumjents or destruction. tried burning out in fire pit works well but tar makes a mess. thinking on how i can build a propane oven of sorts with drain to collect hot tar in 5 gal buckets and use on the driveway. any one got any ideas

I think I remember that thread also NA. Just recently to as a matter of fact.

Maybe this site can help you with the propane oven My propane fired oven build

I found others, but it was a pizza oven making one. Heh.

I want to say there was something on GRF on home made propane ovens, or melters..I forget. Been a while.

Good luck!

Sirscrapalot - I love those who yearn for the impossible. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Lighted sign transformers. Are the signs neon? If so the old non electronic ones probably will be pcb containing transformers so they could be hard to sell as scrap. If they are still good, they will sell to people needing to fix their signs. I buy them from time to time and sell to sign guys when they need them. A picture or two would help and if they are neon I can help identify them.

don really need to reuse just a idea

some are neon got them from sign guy looked for core buyer didnt find one

I've heard there is a pretty decent market for them on eBay for the people who experiment with high voltage stuff.

Jon.

Sounds to me you guys are talking about light balest not transmorers. If they do NOT say "no pcb's" DO NOT open them, they will make you very sick and can cause cancer.

Yes those are dangerous. I don't open the ones that don't say NO PCB's. This is true for the regular light ballasts and neon transformers.

I thought the neon sign transformers had two high voltage connections on them that were on fairly large ceramic insulators--a couple of inches high. The lamp ballasts, by comparison, just had wires coming out of them, without the obvious insulators, which are necessary for the very high voltage of the neon signs.

The PCB may or may not be in the enclosures that don't say "no pcb". Some manufacturers didn't use pcb as insulating oil, even back then. You need to compare the name tags with the database that the EPA has...not exactly sure, but Canada has one of those databases, with photos to aid in identification. Your scrap yard might be able to help you here.

As for the location of the actual PCB, it is not just "everywhere" inside the ballast container, but was inside of a small capacitor that was in there with the transformer coils. The whole mess was then potted with tar. There can be some contamination of the tar if the capacitor was leaky.

PCB won't kill you instantly... it isn't a real bad actor, but bioaccumulates and will build up in your system, since the body doesn't know how to get rid of it. Back in the DEW line days of early warning radar in Nothern Canada, guys apparently deep fried food with it. And it was accidentally mixed in cooking oil in a city in Japan...called Minimata disease or something like that. When you burn PCB oil, it gives off some REAL bad actors in the forms of dioxins and furans.

So don't run around screaming if you figure you have something that has PCB. Use rubber gloves if you have something leaking and contain it. The biggest issue is to find out how to safely and legally dispose of it, which I'm guessing differs for each state. It probably can be taken in (in small quantities) with the toxic waste that the local disposal sites have to deal with.

Hope this helps,
Jon.

thanks to all for your input this is the second load of these tranasformer ive fooled with so far none have had pcb

made good money on the first load but had more time to deal with them having a 9t05 and trying to scrap there just aint enough hours in a day