review this battery charger

heh. I assume folk were looking at cloth to estimate the cost of woven tube.

They should be nearer to 100% than 50. A truck battery is what, 200Ah or so, or for an old Indian truck maybe 30Ah. Looking to cut costs always I doubt they'd charge it at more than 6A. They only need a short charge to get it started or a slow charge after rebuilding a battery. That's a huge transformer for 6A.

It's absolutely overkill for starter battery charger. Perhaps they are building low voltage EV trucks?

Why is it overkill? Nobody anywhere starts a truck with a 6amp battery charger. No matter the output of the first transformer in the video, the only thing going for it is the huge thermal mass. You can probably charge at least a couple batteries before it catches on fire and electrocutes everybody crouched in the nearest puddle.

I watched the video but the design details are hard to determine. IF they wire an

*incandescent lamp* in series with the output leg, then that would at least provide some current limiting. It wouldn't save someone from shock but might limit sparking and fire creation. That poor little diode, needs some protection against shorts. I saw the guy "sparking" by touching the battery clamps together while the unit was live. So shorting must have been expected....?

The terrible core will limit output current as well. It's a different story on the primary side. I do wonder what the %Z is for that tranformer shown in the first part of the video.

It looks like they show the start of the making of one model, then switch to the enclosure and completion of a different model. The frame clamps are wood, then metal in the last half of the video. That must be for the premium model. They do have fuses installed on the contraption. My guess is they do nothing until half the windings are shorted in the first place. The sparking was likely the final test procedure.

I also wonder how this transformer stacks up against one from the US or europe that was made in the mid to late 1800s.

I hope you mean 1900s.

No, I mean 1800s, back before AC became the standard and true mass production of transfomers probably took off.

I guess 4A chargers are more common than 6, either works though.

The one thing going for it is it's affordable. They might be using high current diodes salvaged from SMPSUs.

I doubt they'd go to the expense of a lightbulb.

I expect they use whatever they have. Why not.

To be fair you don't want the fuse to pop every time the connectors touch

and not a bad one.

identical I suspect. If I were in their position, without the skills to make an smpsu or the money to buy decent parts, I'd do mostly the same. I'd see if there were cheaper alternatives to cotton.