Today's Five Minute Job

This was to be today's five minute job; this picture was taken after three and a half hours! I recently repaired the switch mode power supply on our DVD player and thought how convenient it would be to have a variable voltage supply available when setting such up.

I therefore hunted out this variac from the back of my workshop and decided to connect it up to a mains outlet socket. I believe that this variac originated from the now long-gone GEC Hirst Research Centre based at Wembley, so I thought it would be correctly wired. For some reason I decided to check it anyway, had I used it, it could have been lethal, the earth continuity between input and output did not exist, the wiring was such that it was likely to short out internally and most of the connecting screws were loose.

In this picture I have just reached the point where everything inside the variac has been sorted and it is only a matter of now fitting multi-way free sockets to the output leads. Just for good measure I have connected a mains plug containing an RCD to the input lead; it might just save me from a shocking experience.