Paul and Sabrina's Cheap 3 Phase Inverter (AC Controller) with Field Oriented Control

[Yukon_Shane]

Hey guys,

I'm working my way through this thread. it's great stuff. I'm interested in the DC controller. For those of you who've built it, how difficult would it be to build this controller for the average electronic hobbyist?

My Evnetics controller just died on my and I'm thinking it might be fun to try and build this one rather then buy another controller (that will probably just break in a couple years).

Is Paul planning to put this together into a kit?

cheers

[thingstodo]

Originally Posted by Yukon_Shane

Hey guys,

I'm working my way through this thread. it's great stuff. I'm interested in the DC controller. For those of you who've built it, how difficult would it be to build this controller for the average electronic hobbyist?

My Evnetics controller just died on my and I'm thinking it might be fun to try and build this one rather then buy another controller (that will probably just break in a couple years).

Is Paul planning to put this together into a kit?

cheers

I have talked to Paul about making the kit available. I believe that the only hold-up is Paul's time. Instructions take a lot of time and preparation! And so does kitting the right number of parts into small bags and labeling it all.

About the construction - there are SOME surface-mount parts since all of the parts are just not available in DIP any more. I would not recommend the build for someone who has never soldered before .. but if you have soldered before you should be good. The mechanical stuff is where I have problems ... drilling and tapping holes in the heat sink; getting the holes in the lid to line up; getting the gasket on the cooling plate to seal; supporting the capacitor while you are making connections.

You will need a big soldering iron for soldering copper plate, and an electronics soldering iron for soldering surface mount chips ...

[adamj12b]

Originally Posted by Yukon_Shane

Hey guys,
My Evnetics controller just died on my and I'm thinking it might be fun to try and build this one rather then buy another controller (that will probably just break in a couple years).

Shane,

Sorry to be off topic, but what happened to the Evnetics controller? Was this a Jr?

I think this is the thread your interested in: http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...ller-6404.html

Thats the 144V 500A DC Controller.

-Adam

[Yukon_Shane]

Originally Posted by adamj12b

Shane,

Sorry to be off topic, but what happened to the Evnetics controller? Was this a Jr?

Thats the 144V 500A DC Controller.

-Adam

Hey Adam,

I'm not exactly sure what happened to my Soliton Jr. it's giving me a "desaturation" error code which is likely caused by and IGBT failure (at least that's what the evnetics tech response suggested). I've been quoted a likely repair cost of around $700 plus shipping which makes the repair not really worth it in my mind.

The 144V 500A controller is just a bit too small for me unfortunately. My pack is 200V and I'd like to be able to draw at least 600A continuously (ideally closer to 800amps). I was understanding that this AC controller could also be configured as a dc controller. Not so?

[Yukon_Shane]

Originally Posted by thingstodo

I have talked to Paul about making the kit available. I believe that the only hold-up is Paul's time. Instructions take a lot of time and preparation! And so does kitting the right number of parts into small bags and labeling it all.

About the construction - there are SOME surface-mount parts since all of the parts are just not available in DIP any more. I would not recommend the build for someone who has never soldered before .. but if you have soldered before you should be good. The mechanical stuff is where I have problems ... drilling and tapping holes in the heat sink; getting the holes in the lid to line up; getting the gasket on the cooling plate to seal; supporting the capacitor while you are making connections.

You will need a big soldering iron for soldering copper plate, and an electronics soldering iron for soldering surface mount chips ...

thanks for this response. I'm not too worried about the soldering bits, I have a fair bit of experience with that. I'm more concerned about the documentation. I don't have a lot of experience reading circuit diagrams, etc. so I'd need to have a good idea as to how everything fits together. I'll keep reading through these posts and see if it make sense to me.

it's a pretty awesome project, I'd love to be able to say that I built my own controller.

[MPaulHolmes]

You COULD use the AC controller as a DC controller, but I think a board dedicated to DC would be a little better. The AC board has 6 isolated supplies, but you only really need 1 for a DC controller. I'm going to get a surface mount DC and AC board made (well, the AC is done, and the DC will be very similar), and will get some metals fabricated. The cost of getting the metals made is my main holdup. Well, and that I've been stuck up in Oregon/Washington for work for the last few weeks. I'll be back home around the 10th though.

I think that if the metals are all drilled and bent, and the board is soldered, then you should be able to assemble it in a couple hours.

[freebeard]

Don't be 'stuck up'. You can be relaxed and casual in Oregon/Washington.

Someday I'll need one of those kits, but apparently there is no hurry on my behalf.

[Yukon_Shane]

Originally Posted by MPaulHolmes

You COULD use the AC controller as a DC controller, but I think a board dedicated to DC would be a little better. The AC board has 6 isolated supplies, but you only really need 1 for a DC controller. I'm going to get a surface mount DC and AC board made (well, the AC is done, and the DC will be very similar), and will get some metals fabricated. The cost of getting the metals made is my main holdup. Well, and that I've been stuck up in Oregon/Washington for work for the last few weeks. I'll be back home around the 10th though.

I think that if the metals are all drilled and bent, and the board is soldered, then you should be able to assemble it in a couple hours.

Hey Paul,

this sounds really awesome. Can I pre-order materials to help you with the costs? What other components will I need to track down?

thanks

[MPaulHolmes]

OK I just got back home at like 3:30am. phew! We came through the redwoods from Washington. Someone should have told me that they were around the same size as the olympic national park trees. haha. My kids learned all sorts of things while in Lacey, WA. What it looks like to see drivers smoke a bong and drive at the same time, all sorts of awesome things were learned. They also learned what a green plus sign means, and never to get coffee at a small espresso stand anywhere in Lacey until they are 18. Good old washington. But I digress!

I got a 3 phase grid tie working based on the AC controller code! Now if we ever move to a 3rd world country and they need a 1MW grid tie for a town, I can hook a brother up. The grid really is just a spinning motor. You can charge a battery bank by "regenning" from the grid, and you can "spin the motor faster" by twisting the throttle the other way, and feed power to the grid. Beautiful, glorious "dc" current control (even though it's AC).

Hi Yukon_shane, I need to get the board made first, and somebody is going to help me to get the metals fabbed. I need to do that first. I noticed that people who have money can do things fast, and people who are always broke do things slowly. It's a fascinating observation that I have just recently discovered. So, I don't want any money though until I get the metals made up. I want to get to a place where I can have the kit done BEFORE anybody sends me money for it. That way, I wouldn't be in such big trouble if something went wrong.

[e*clipse]

Hi Paul - welcome back!

I have some questions for you and thingstodo (or for that matter anyone who's messed with the IGBT drivers on this board.

I've succeeded so far in blowing up the maindriver board on the 1st gen controller. I've burned up (let the magic smoke out) of the 5V regulator and also fried the DSPIC.

What i'm trying to do is use the separate IGBT boards Paul designed, based on the 2nd gen controller.

I am doing something slightly differently, however. Instead of using an ATTINY to drive the IXDN604 IGBT driver that's used to drive the Isolation transformer, I'm using the main controller's "heartbeat" circuit. In other words, I'm using two of the DSPIC's pins to drive the power supply circuits of the IGBT driver boards. With the proper use of the timing interrupts, i'm able to get a 62.5 Khz signal out of each pin. They are close to 50% duty cycle (about 49.XX) and there is a slight lag. They don't run exacty 180 degrees out of phase, closer to ~165 degrees.

The first time I let the magin smoke out was a stupid mistake of plugging the driver board in backwards.

After rebuilding things - new PIC and 5V rectifier - I tried driving the IGBT driver again with the heartbeat circuit. At first - YEAH! it worked - I was able to get +15, -8.2 volts on the Isolated part of the supply.

Then, for some reason it locked up and then burned up. This time the IXDN604 and the driver board's 24V supply burned up.

Any suggestions, help for getting this running more reliably? I need 4 working IGBT driver boards for this project and I'm having trouble getting 1 to reliably work.

-e*clipse