I found a scruffy old generator on an auction site.
As it's 'we're all home' I bought it for a very good price, stripped it and cleaned everything, then mounted it on a board with screw terminals for ease of use. (See picture below.)
It's had very little use – the brushes are very long, not worn down.
That's the background of this little monster and now the 'can I do that' bit.
It has two outlets, (calling left and right) the motor draws 3amperes at 12V according to my clamp meter, the left output is showing 1888 volts on my multimeter set at 600V DC and is stable.
The righthand outlet is showing 1475V (can't see a decimal point on either display) and that is a rough average because it's flicking up and down by twenty or so.
Now, this is the question:
Can I have it self powering and charging a 24V battery bank?
I'd love a list of bits and a diagram.
Best Answer
I suspect it is a dynamotor to provide high voltages for a mobile, vacuum tube-based radio station of one or another kind, from just a car battery voltage. It is similar by appearance to the dynamotor seen in that Wikipedia article. It probably has military origins and powered up something serious and with transmitter. Just for a car radio, seems overkill. This also would explain why it is little used.
It is an interesting piece of technology but I really cannot think anything useful you could do in these days with such a converter. If to power a nostalgic tube amp, it is probably for that too noisy and the amp should come with its own transformer. Careful with high voltages it produces.