How does a toroidal choke differ from an ordinary inductor? How do I use the rating to determine what frequencies it passes and what it filters out? Is there a good reference for this? A SAMS manual or something? I couldn't find much on the web.
As a related issue, why are toroidal chokes common in cheap (but decent) surge suppressors, but the real fancy ones seem to include very large inductors.
Thanks.
A choke is a choke. It is an inductor.
Torroids tend to be more compact and tend to not emit external fields.
No magic ... they are inductors.
The torroid core is a big issue ... and that is a book unto itself.
Inductive reactance is 2*pi*f*L. One often chooses a choke with 10 times the inductive reactance (compared to the load resistance). That's just a low-level intro into this topic.
Google for low-pass filters.
It tends to have less stray field.
It difficult to make gapped cores with toroids though. Instead they tend to made with a variety of permeabilites.
Graham
** The toroidal chokes seen in most line filters only reduce radio frequency energy travelling down the wires.
Larger chokes ( likely made with gapped iron cores) will reduce much lower frequencies, down into the audio band for use with hi-fi systems.
...... Phil
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