Im posting this to get a feeler if people would be interested in this.
Last year I did a few group buys for CM400DU-12F IGBT modules. A good amount of people bought them, But not many people have posted what they did with them. For all I know, they are still sitting in peoples closets
Well I have but together a design for a controller using 3 modules. It also uses an SBE ring cap and bus plate design. This design includes a driver board that uses a single VLA-500-01 driver module with some passive balancing circuitry to drive all 3 IGBT's in parallel. This design should be good for 900-1000A for as long as you can keep it cool. A water chilled plate is recommended. Also, as a side note, this is the same cap thats used in the Soliton 1.
I plan on having 1 of these made for a project, but if people are interested, I can get a quote for more sets of bus plates. More that are wanted, the cheeper they will become.
The plates will be water-jet cut and bent professionally. I will then sandwich the plates during assembly with a sheet of 3mil mylar that has been cad cut. This will provide isolation of around 5kV.
Estimated cost of a kit MINUS igbt's would be somewhere around 400+ the cost of the bus bars, bus plates and mylar. So safely $600 is probably where it would be.
I know this seems like alot, but just compare it to the cost of a production 1kA controller at wound $3k.
Well let me kno. Here are some pictures.
-Adam
3 IGBT Controller W bars by
AdamBrunette, on Flickr
3 IGBT Controller Explode by
AdamBrunette, on Flickr