Amps
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: [Amps] premade HV rectifier board

To: amps@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [Amps] premade HV rectifier board
From: Manfred Mornhinweg <manfred@ludens.cl>
Date: Fri, 05 Jul 2013 02:37:54 +0000
List-post: <amps@contesting.com">mailto:amps@contesting.com>
Hi Rag, Chris, and all,

It'll be a lot dearer than making a board using 6A10
diodes yourself though.

I agree with that. I think it's a mighty waste of money to buy such encapsulated high voltage rectifiers. Sure, they look "professional", if that's what a ham wants in his amplifier... But a simple string of plain common cheap diodes will do the same job, at a small fraction of the cost.

In my old amplifier I use strings of five 1N5408 diodes. This amp has a voltage doubling power supply, so the voltage stress is the same, and the current stress is twice as much as the diode strings in a bridge rectifier for the same DC voltage and current would be exposed to. Still five of these diodes provide plenty safety margin. I'm using them since 15 years ago, and they have never failed. Instead the original rectifier modules of that amp, which were rated at only 750mA, failed.

Note that these diode strings are plain, simple and pure, without any resistors nor capacitors in parallel. The mentioned diodes have very low reverse current, and benign avalanche characteristics, which makes those resistors and capacitors totally superfluous. And you can buy these diodes locally almost anywhere in the world, for very little money.

Manfred



========================
Visit my hobby homepage!
http://ludens.cl
========================
_______________________________________________
Amps mailing list
Amps@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/amps

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>