We developed a new crowbar and series resistor (glitch resistor as
you call it, crowbar resistor as we call it) in 1996 for the 30 kV,
250 Amp plate power supplies for our triodes. The resistor is made of
two components; the interesting half was a low inductance air wound
design made from nichrome wire, using an Ayrton-Perry configuration
(counter wound wires) with about 10 kW dissipation at normal
operation. The crowbar device is a standard mercury ignitron, driven
by a pulse transformer, driven by a triggered spark gap, driven off a
resistance on the power supply return lead. These big resistors,
about 6 feet long and 2 feet in diameter, are fan cooled, and are
braced for the mechanical force created from the high peak current
during a glitch. With the resistor, we limit the peak current to
under 3000 Amperes, and it decays rapidly due to the critically
damped response of the network. I can send a PDF format of the paper
on this system, on inquiry. It is about 32K size. A photo of the
energy storage 'vault' and series resistor (and crowbar) can be sent,
about 64K in size. If you want to see how big rigs do it....
73
John
K5PRO
--
FAQ on WWW: http://www.contesting.com/FAQ/amps
Submissions: amps@contesting.com
Administrative requests: amps-REQUEST@contesting.com
Problems: owner-amps@contesting.com
|