Transformer disassembly?

[Khron]

Greetings,

Has anyone attempted / succeeded in taking apart some power transformers from psu's? It would be nice to "recycle" a few of the cores & bobbins from some psu's i have lying around for gutting. Would make for some nifty active speakers and such

I remember a year or two back, dad suggested baking them in the oven for a while, but we never got around to trying it out...

[Behemot]

Re: Transformer disassembly?

I tried with the smaller ones, but the core usually broke down since it's fragible and I only used force on them. Oven may help but depends on which parts of the transformer you want, the plastics could melt down or so...

[stj]

Re: Transformer disassembly?

i have, but as above, it's 50/50 that you will get the ferrite apart in the correct number of sections.

[Scenic]

Re: Transformer disassembly?

i tried taking a shorted one apart to find out how many windings it had.
cut the ferrite or w/e it was apart with my dremel and a cutting wheel.. worked relatively well..

[stj]

Re: Transformer disassembly?

it didnt work relatively well, you cut the ferrite.
so if you find the wire size & number of turns, you still need to new transformer or core.

the goal is to get the ferrite halves seperated without damage.

[Scenic]

Re: Transformer disassembly?

i cut it apart to find out the number of turns. in case i couldn't find the exact replacement, i could rewind my own one from scratch. (was for a set top box SMPS.. so lots of room to work in there.. unlike in an ATX PSU)

some of those transformers are sort of "glued" together.. cutting through that glue would probably work if you're careful enough, but i honestly don't know what to "glue" it back together with.. ? oO

[stj]

Re: Transformer disassembly?

ceramic epoxy is what they use on most of them.