Tanning Bed Buck Booster – What are Buck Boosters?

When shopping for a tanning bed, you may run across some verbiage that states "buck booster may be required".   It doesn't explain what it is and leaves you wondering why in the world you would need such a thing.   And you absolutely do need a buck booster if your voltage isn't what the tanning bed specifications are calling for.  For example, let's say you own a tanning salon and the incoming voltage to your store is 208 volts.  The tanning bed you are hooking up requires 220 volts.  The 208 volts is not sufficient.  You need to "boost" the power to the voltage that particular tanning bed needs.

A buck booster is a transformer that can either "buck" (which is to lower voltage) or "boost" (which is to increase voltage).  These buck boosters come in a 12/24 or 16/32.  These numbers mean that you can buck or boost voltage by that number.  So, in the above scenario where you owned a tanning salon, you would need a 12/24 buck boost transformer so that you could boost voltage by the "12" number. 208 volts plus 12 volts = 220 volts!  The required voltage for that bed.

I hope that this explanation has shed some light on buck boost transformers and why they are needed for tanning beds.