Dimming is done on the primary side of the transformer. There are some cases (very rare) where a dimmer or voltage control would be applied at the secondary, but not a common practice.
So, your saying that by doing this a typical 100watt Home Depot $59 transformer may last 6 months instead of 1 year then? How is it hard on it? Are the flux angles part of this ?
Using a dimmer rated for magnetic loads is not too hard on the transformer at all. In cinemas they commonly use standard boost/buck transformers for the aisle lights, they seem to hold up well. Only burnouts I've seen are because of a sustained fault on the secondary and in a few cases where the dimmer was the wrong type or had failed and was imposing too much chop on the output.
The HD $59 special should last for it's usual life. (I have a few of the Malibu brand going on 10 years now.)
The dimmer Bob is talking about is designed for inductive loads. It will work for resistive, but a dimmer designed for resistive loads will cause the transformer (or the dimmer) to fail early, and it'll be noisy.
We use Variacs for controlling transformers. I have a 5kva Variac, that we can step voltage from '0" zero to 580, makes some testing easier to be able to control the voltage.
I'm waiting for the catch.. the missing information.
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