Posted on 08/03/2025 6:34:56 PM PDT by delta7
Correct. Why would we allow ourselves to outsource CRITICAL infrastructure?
Perhaps the reason the manufacturing of transformers shifted to
India and China is that they are built with an inordinate amount of hand labor. Couldn’t transformers be built cost effectively in the US with robotics and AI?
Transformers have many toxic chemicals…no problem for India and China.
AI says:
“PCBs are highly toxic and have been linked to serious health issues, including cancer, leading to their ban in many countries…
PCB’s are extremely toxic….many countries have banned transformer manufacturing.
(*modified to a G rating)
“
many countries have banned transformer manufacturing.”
Once again, Socrates fails! No wonder you lost over $700,000,000 of tour clients’ funds and ended up in jail.
While no countries have completely banned the manufacturing of transformers, several countries have implemented restrictions or faced limitations on specific aspects related to their production or import
https://www.google.com/search?q=which+countries+banned+transformer+manufacturing
“Transformers have many toxic chemicals…no problem for India and China.
AI says:
“PCBs are highly toxic and have been linked to serious health issues, including cancer, leading to their ban in many countries…”
You need to update Socrates. Transformer PCBs are no longer a concern.
Yo!
OK, I got flamed on my comment
However, we do build a lot of large assemblies in Houston
My company worked on parts for a large cooling assembly for a natural gas liquefaction plant. It operated on a ship off the coast of Africa.
Individual parts that we completed were twenty feet long and we had to fabricate the equipment to do the job. The complete heat exchanger was about 30X30X50 feet in volume and weighed over 200 tons.
Yes, we have some creative folks in Houston. I once designed a device to attack enemy pipelines underwater. The oil service company had a complete, tested, and operational device in less than a month.
Once I got a call at 5 PM on a Friday, “We gotta have this part tomorrow morning or the ship cannot sail”. I went to the test outfit that was completing dye penetrant and X Ray inspection. Picked up the part at midnight.
My troops came in Saturday morning at 5 AM and finished the part. I delivered it before 8 AM.
The check we received was quite satisfactory.
That is indeed how we operate in Houston.
“Fast, Cheap or Good— pick any two.”
My small manufacturing company in Houston is the most expensive in the region but…
Fastest turnaround
Meeting demanding customer specs
Widest skill set in my industry
Tech library is the best in Texas
Processes that no one else can do
My father’s best advice, “Be special. Do things that no one else can do”
No.
The loudspeaker (driver, or, rarely, the crossover in a multi-way loudspeaker system) is zapped by a spike coming in from the long wires attaching it to the amplifier. Even the most fragile loudspeaker driver in a loudspeaker system, the tweeter, could be setting on top of the enclosure, disconnected, and lightning striking nearby would not damage it - unless it got knocked to the floor by the sonic blast being generated!
One can, in fact, place a loudspeaker driver in a loudspeaker magnetizer, which generates an extremely powerful magnetic field, to either magnetize the magnet (some mfgrs. magnetize the speaker at the end of the assembly) or to “remagnetize” it. (For one, sometimes the old Alnico magnet speakers would partially demagnetize if played very hard, and “neodymium” magnet speakers can be partially demagnetized by a strong input and heat. Or, sometimes for one reason or another, a loudspeaker driver might not get a full “charge” in production, so you run it through the magnetizer again.) MAYBE if one shorted the loudspeaker driver’s terminals during magnetization, that might be a problem, but, no one does that.
I’ve been in the audio and electronics business all my life, mainly dealing with loudspeakers, and have NEVER run across an instance where voltage induced by a lightning strike harmed a disconnected (and powered off) device, be it an electronic device (radio, cell phone, LED light bulb, etc.) or an electrical device (say, a loudspeaker, a transformer, an electric fan motor, etc.) Neither myself or a customer.
Mind you, I’ve seen plenty of lightning damage, direct and induced, but always a long wire was involved, and almost always the device was turned on. My own latest victim was the new (arrgghh!) ceiling light in our kitchen. Lightning hit very close by (one of those where you don’t even hear a preceding “pop” then “BAMMM!” — this one was a simultaneous {it seemed} flash and “PAMMM!!)”. My laptop was running a few feet below the light (I was monitoring radar), but I had it OFF the charger. It was undamaged. Our nice new light was the only victim: I took it apart and evidently it doesn’t have any significant input spike suppression. It’s also on a circuit devoted to lighting, which means no surge suppressors are plugged into that circuit. I likely should add one. :-(
MAYBE a lightning bolt literally a few feet away could induce enough voltage into a voice coil to cause the wire insulation to fail and then current could flow and damage the unit - but I’ve never heard of such a thing, even when warehouses full of raw drivers were hit. More likely, a magnetic pulse sufficient to do that would throw said loudspeakers around (as sometimes happens in magnetizers when the driver to be magnetized is allowed to rock, is not properly centered, etc.) I’ve never heard of that, either: Loudspeakers, or parts for them, being thrown around by a nearby lightning bolt.
The most likely source of someone claiming lightning damaged their loudspeaker “when it wasn’t even connected to anything” is someone who couldn’t fool the hi-fi shop, so, now they are trying to falsify an insurance claim, after they played their speaker too loud.
Big power transformers MIGHT be damaged by an exceptionally powerful EMP, even disconnected, if:
Their insulation is poor or old, they are a poor design (not EMP resistant), or if they are not shielded.
Even so, disconnecting them reduces their risk immensely.
An old and wise engineer, with a lot of industrial experience, once told me (a young engineer asking about an idea I had): “ANYTHING” can be done for enough money!
Well, ALMOST anything!
Yup. Not following that advice “demised” more than one US company I worked for... :-(
And 80% of our pharmaceuticals - all for the almighty dollar and forgetting national security and the well being of the citizenry.
A magnetic coil is part of a transformer. Magnetic flux moving across any coil will, in fact, induce a voltage. Current will flow it there is a complete circuit. High voltage has a way of making a complete circuit. Lightning makes an extremely powerful magnetic field that pulsates with each strike exchange.
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