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Universal Power Supply

Convert whatever power source is available to the one you need

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This is a ridiculously universal power supply -

Potentially delivering up to 20kW.

Trying to run an oscilloscope with a sketchy community wind turbine in a remote village?
No worries - convert that mess into a clean, stable, true sine wave - or whatever else you need.

Minor reconfiguration allows conversion of any reasonably sane power source into any other reasonable (or even some unreasonable) output.

What about when there is no power supply available at all? Not to worry - The solar panel and giant internal lithium battery have you covered.

Right now it is configured as a high-fidelity double resonant solid state tesla coil... But the possibilities are endless.

This was a build first design later kind of project.

At this point I believe it is physically complete and should be functional.

I might have taken this project as far as I can alone - the real time control firmware for reliable high power regulation is a bit over my head. Anyone out there interested?

All design details will be made available - My goal is 100% open source and open hardware.

The Teensy core library uses an "MIT-like" license. Most of the code is Arduino for which the libraries are under the LGPL.

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  • Video is up!

    oneohm10/10/2016 at 04:40 0 comments

  • A look under the isolation transformer

    oneohm10/10/2016 at 04:11 0 comments

    A look under the isolation transformer.

    The wire routing has changed since this was taken, but this shows the layout of the components that are normally obscured by the transformer.

  • Heart Surgery

    oneohm10/04/2016 at 23:34 0 comments

    To monitor the current I modified the boards to accept some Allegro high current sensor ICs.
    http://www.allegromicro.com/en/Products/Current-Sensor-ICs/Fifty-To-Two-Hundred-Amp-Integrated-Conductor-Sensor-ICs.aspx

    The board has a hefty jumper connection (JM1) to monitor current to ground, but I also wanted to to measure output current (for some experiments these will not be the same).

    This turned out to be more difficult that just cutting a trace as power was also being routed on some of the internal layers. Two carefully drilled holes and a slot cut through the board. These were later insulated with some clear acrylic sealant (nail polish).

    Another angle:

    I carefully removed the solder mask to create a footprint for the second current sensor:

    Here you can see them mounted to the module on the right:


  • The Heart

    oneohm10/04/2016 at 22:44 0 comments

    The heart of the machine consists of two evaluation kits for the CREE 1200V SiC MOSFET and SiC Schottky diode. They come with really nice matched heat sinks. The high power devices bolt directly to the heat sink through matched holes milled into the PCB.

    Evaluation Board details:

    • 900V max.
    • 10kW /w a cooling fan
    • > 300 kHz
    • +12V aux supply
    • 2 input PWM channels


    -Digikey product page: http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/cree-wolfspeed/KIT8020-CRD-8FF1217P-1/KIT8020-CRD-8FF1217P-1-ND/5027643



  • Control Box

    oneohm10/03/2016 at 03:42 0 comments

    Here are the brains - a Teesnsy 3.2 with an audio expansion board (w/ microSD slot):
    I/O and power are protected by the "isolation module".

    And the reverse:

  • Isolation Board

    oneohm10/03/2016 at 02:55 0 comments

    Here are a few of the components that ended up on the isolation board:

    Close to the current configuration (not to worry - specifics are on the way)

    The bottom:

    Bottom with protective sheet in place:

  • It takes shape

    oneohm10/03/2016 at 02:07 0 comments

    Finalized layout with most components bolted to the plywood base at this point.

  • Mocking up the component layout

    oneohm10/03/2016 at 02:03 0 comments

    Here is one of the early layouts, it has been through several iterations.

  • First parts

    oneohm10/03/2016 at 01:58 0 comments

    I started out with these components and a vague idea with how they might go together.

  • The "Documentation"

    oneohm10/03/2016 at 01:47 0 comments

    This project used nothing resembling a traditional design process - It was a slow evolution that has brought it to this point. I am committed to making the design open and available for other people to take further.

    I present the only documentation to date (other than many photos):

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Discussions

Kuba Sunderland-Ober wrote 02/18/2024 at 22:36 point

Could you describe a little bit what is this thing supposed to do, in the first place? All I see right now is a mains rectifier with big capacitors, and an H-bridge. This isn't really adaptable for "everything" - it's just a fancy name for your Tesla coil driver. Am I missing something?

As far as I can see, you claim that this can be "potentially anything" where all it got to its name is what would go into a switching power supply *before* the transformer. In that respect, it's a bit closer to a VFD or a BLDC servo drive power stage, rather than a "universal" power supply.

Running it at 10-20kW without PFC will make just about any poor infrastructure supplying the AC power rather miserable (or outright fail). Overloaded/sketchy "community wind turbine" needs to be loaded with something approaching a resistor. The sketchier the supply, the more care it needs, basically.

  Are you sure? yes | no

oneohm wrote 02/19/2024 at 03:32 point

This project was indeed originally the power supply / driver for a tesla coil.

As you note, as presented it is what you would expect to find in a switching power supply before the transformer, although I was careful to point out "reconfiguration allows conversion of any reasonably sane power source into any other".  However, I presented this configuration when I originally posted it years ago to show it could power a tesla coil; if my goal was to demonstrate a wide range of usage, I suppose I could have shown its adaptability to a greater degree.

I generally shy away from sharing my projects, but in this case I thought it might be helpful for other people as inspiration in their projects; sometimes it's good to remember we have the right to create projects for the fun of it or because we're honing a new skill. I frequently look at what others do for inspiration, and know that without what they've shared I wouldn't be able to grow as quickly myself.

By the way, I do want to mention that I enjoyed looking at your SDO Milliohm Meter; I might want to build one myself sometime.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Kuba Sunderland-Ober wrote 02/24/2024 at 16:03 point

I have nothing at all against posting all kind of projects, but grandiose claims are slightly off-putting, that's all. You present an architecture that is fundamentally at odds with low-quality/overloaded/underdesigned power grid, yet you allude that it was a design goal - so it can potentially mislead people into thinking it'd be the right approach. You have an excellent project as long as you don't present it as something universal, but rather a nice tesla coil driver, and definitely not the way to go with poor power grid etc. That's clearly not the case, and while it may have been a thought on your end, nothing in the design reflects that.

Now, you could have been going for sarcasm all over the place - in that case, please accept my apologies, since it has clearly sailed way over my head :)

  Are you sure? yes | no

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