Description on page 2

Secundary board

COMPAQ PROLIANT PS4060 Power Supply Primary board

+382V

220uF

0.5 mH

350 VA
1.8 mH

230V/ 50Hz

2.5 kHz

660uF

115V/ 3A/ 400Hz

1:1
2 uF

PFC
2 uF
120k
45uH
+24V

47nF
15k

220uF

V~

A~

1mA / 150Vac

20mA / 3A ac

5R6
9V
100k

27R
1uF

15.61 V

BYV26E
+382V

+
12k
150p

CD40174

2n2

400Hz

CD4049

6k8

5uF

8k

10n
12k

27

IRFP460

56k
22k

5V6
33k

3k3

NE5561

33n

27k

CD4093

7.57 V

33k

15 nF

15k

Vcc

PWM

22k

56k
FREQ
5k
18k

27k

IRS2109

OP470
5.76 V

3.8V
(0)

+15

7.55 V

11 kHz

100k

15k

27

Mid voltage

oscillator

7k8

+8Vref
4800Hz

1N4148

270k

1k

0.135R

220k
2n2
100Hz ripple
feed forward

39k

3k3
AMPL

10k

+15
10 uF
10 cycle ramp-up

350W 400Hz converter

16 april 2008

Magnetics

400Hz converter
8 August 2008

K.Bouwknegt

PWM filter inductor 1.8mH/4Arms

The inductor is based on a ferrite core E55/28/21
from either Ferroxcube or EPCOS. The core halves
are gapless, so I added 1.6mm printed circuit board
as gap. The coil with 1.1mm dia wire has 88 turns in
4 layers, that is 14 metres, with 0.24 dc resistance.

The 400Hz converter is based on a Compaq Proliant

Server power supply. This hot-swappable PSU type
PS4060 is rated for 750W at 220Vac input, or 500W
at 120Vac input. It should be possible to make at
least 300W output at 400Hz with this PSU.

Output transformer

From the PS4060, the chassis, fan, and primary

electronics board were used, plus some coils and flat
cable connectors from the secondary board.
Almost everything on the main board (on top of
photo) was used: the input rectifier, the PFC circuit
to get 382Vdc, the auxiliary converter to provide
+9V and +15V voltages for the fan and PWM
electronics, the heatsinks and 2 out of the 4 power
fets that once drove the converter transformers on the
secondary board.

The transformer was made on a C-core from

Vacuumschmelze type SU48b with an iron section
15 x 25mm. Both primary and secondary have 144
turns of the same 1.1mm dia enameled wire in 4
layers, 2 layers on each leg. In total 40 meters, with
0.34 dc resistance for either primary or secondary.
The copper loss is 6W at 300W output. The (only)
core I had was made for 50/60Hz, wound from
0.3mm strip. To keep the losses reasonable at 400Hz,
the peak induction is only 1.2T. With the fan used,
both iron and copper stabilize at 48C at 300W
output.
The isolation between primary and secondary is 3
layers mylar, and withstands 2kV rms

Board 2 was added to the heatsink on the

primaries board (orange board on photo) to create the
400Hz PWM drive signals for two power FETs on
the main board. This board contains a 4800Hz
oscillator ( 12 x 400Hz), a divide-by-12 shift register
to make 6 square waves at 400Hz, each 30 degrees
phase shifted from the previous one; a buffer
amplifier to give these square waves a variable
height, a summing amplifier that adds 5 square
waves to a stepped wave at 400Hz that has no lower
harmonics than the 11th, and the PWM chip.
This 400Hz sine wave is compared to a 18kHz saw
tooth in a dedicated PWM circuit, resulting in one bit
information whether the lower or upper fet should be
"on".
A special "pole" driver circuit splits this signal into
drive signals for the upper and lower power fet.
Using this circuit, no drive transformers are needed.

Board 3 on the bottom of the case contains the

power output circuit.
On the left, two large capacitors form the midpoint
of the DC supply as a return for the output circuit. A
2mH/4A ferrite core choke in series with a ring core
choke and 4x 1uF capacitors filter the PWM
waveform into a sine wave
The cut-off frequency is 1.8 kHz, near the fourth
harmonic of 400Hz. This frequency is almost absent
in the PWM modulator, as well as in the expected
load current.
The filtering of the 18kHz carrier is enhanced by
giving half the capacitors a series choke, thus
forming a notch at the pwm frequency.

Finally, a C-core transformer with 1:1 turns ratio

provides isolation between the mains and the 400Hz
output. Behind the meters are some components that
were salvaged from the original PS4060 secondary
board to provide a 24Vdc/3A output, needed as well
by most avionics .

Metering
The voltmeter is straightforward. A 1mA moving
coil instrument measures the average value of the
rectified output voltage. This value is shown on a

volts rms scale, assuming an (almost) sinusoidal

wave. Full scale at 1mAdc is 150Vac.
The amp meter is a 20mA moving coil instrument,
connected to 200:2 current transformer via a
schottky-diodes bridge. The secondary of the CT
can produce 1Vrms above 300Hz without saturation.
This gives a perfect linear scale to 3A ac.
Lateron I added a small switch to show either the
115V ac voltage and current or the 24Vdc voltage
and current.