Thank you Paul, it's starting to become clearer. I guess I need to know just what a "point motor" is before I really understand what's going on here. It appears from the picture and description that the CDU is a half-wave rectifier, and regulator and a couple of capacitors and the output is a large shot of DC current.
What I said about using DC as an input still holds true, just that you need to observe the right polarity in this case. Not that anyone would ever want to, just that it will work if they do.
The second point I mentioned is that the amount of time the output is present is dependent on the load. Energy is equal to the power (volt-amps) times the time. The higher the load, the higher the current and the shorted the discharge time. So I guess I really would like to know the application, or what a point motor is/does so I know if this is even worth bringing up.
I'm not trying to turn a simple problem into a complex one, I'm just trying to understand it better.
I guess I've lived a sheltered and boring life to think this way. Most engineers do...
Don