The Mrtitanium Forum

Dwayne asks:

I have a home made power supply that a friend built for me a long time ago that I use for anodizing titanium liners and bolsters on pocket knives I build, I don’t know much about electricity but I’m trying to learn, I just finished putting another unit together by looking at the one my friend made me. It has a variac, a full wave bridge rectifier, a light, a fuse link, a on/off switch, a momentary switch, an ammeter and a volt meter. Is it possible for me to add a switch somewhere to change the electricity coming out of my leads from DC to AC and Back. I’m wanting to acid etch my logo in the blades with the same unit if possible, DC etches the Stainless Steel deep and the AC blackens it. If possible, can you explain how to add a switch and what type of switch I need in layman’s terms, as a lot of the schematics look Greek to me. Thank you for your time.

The short answer is: This is a non-trivial change. One problem is that you need a different type of voltage and current meters for AC than for DC. So either you need high end meters that can sense the difference, or a duplicate set of meters and thus a separate set of output leads.

The simple solution would be to simply add another pair of leads from the variac output (before the rectifier) through another fuse and pair of meters to a separate pair of external jacks or leads that are clearly marked AC. And always make sure that only one set of leads actually leads anywhere or connects to anything. Use a separate 3pst switch (and signal light) to turn on the AC leads (presumably like the switch and light that connects the DC leads).

Basically, you can share the power cord and variac, but everything else would have to be be a separate circuit.