I asked this before, but I think on alt.usage.english, and never found a word for it.
Say you connect a device to a battery, and in doing so, the connection goes on then off then on then then off because of a bad connection while you're tightening it. What word would describe that?
Good idea, although I don't seem to have busted my car doing it yet - I do it every time I use it, since something drains the battery at up to 4 amps with all the fuses removed. I'm guessing alternator or alarm.
Anyway, what's the word for doing this?
You'd probably need a German dictionary to come up with a single word.
In AC power it's synchronous transfer. In DC power it's arc-free transfer.
RL
Amazing, the English language has a huge number of words, mind you most of them are duplicates.
That sounds ambiguous. Transfer could mean the transfer of power from A to B, along something already connected.
Google 'transfer switch'.
RL
A lightning strike is a DC transfer. Its hardly 'arc free'. Commander Kinsey is off his meds again
Yes:
"Wackelkontakt" -- literally, "wiggly contact", thus loose contact.
HTH,
Thomas Prufer
WTF? This conversation was not about a particular device. I wanted to know a word in English used to describe when a live connection is made but not smoothly, causing an uneven change from zero to full voltage.
If you want to rule me out of the equation, take a look at some Youtube videos of the huge lever switches used by power companies to switch the HV in transmission lines, and the arcs they create.
I wish I'd learned German. It's so much more descriptive.
legg snipped-for-privacy@nospam.magma.ca> wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
"Soft start" almost applies, but is a power supply term referring to getting the oscillations going, where in some cases it would "hard start" and not get going, which is a fail. So inductors are usually placed inline with the source power of a power supply so that the initial current inrush does not "sieze up" the oscillator making it fail to start.
In switch talk, i'd say you can't do it with direct contacts, and the use of a solid state relay is needed to quell arcing.
For wind power we have laminar flow (smooth) and turbulent.
Surge and erratic or their antonyms come to mind.
boB
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