EEVblog Electronics Community Forum
Products => Test Equipment => Topic started by: JodelJonny on August 16, 2022, 12:01:39 pm
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Hey there :-)
Just got a HP6260B 10V 100A Power supply for next to nothing. Almost broke my back lugging the 45kg thing home in my bike trailer and up the staircase to my appartement.
So now I need a problem for this solution. Any suggestions?
It seems to work fine.
Kind regards :-)
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Make a welder of some sort? Maybe for battery tabs or a spotwelder for more general use?
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Can you crank it up to 12V ? You can start your car when your battery is flat ;)
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Can you crank it up to 12V ? You can start your car when your battery is flat ;)
But then he has to break his back again lugging it down the stairs to get close to his car. :-DD
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Dang that is quite the beast of a PSU
I do have some big ass lab PSUs around and they come in useful at times. They mostly come in useful for stress testing things. If you want to see how well a cable or connector or relay or current shunt or ..etc can handle high current you can hook it up to such a PSU and send any current you want trough there while you watch how hot things get.
They can indeed also make good spot welders for things like battery tabs.
Tho dealing with the high currents they can provide can be tricky since you need some very fat cables to handle it. Got a 500A lab supply around here and the thing needs two 50mm2 cables in parallel to actually carry that current (and yet the cables still get so hot you can barely hold them)
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Thanks for the replys :-)
Yes I'll look into "overclocking" it to 15V or so, so that it would be usable as as battery charger. But I think it is so overengineered, that this would be to complex to be reasonable.
Welding: IIRC spot welding requires tyxpically even higher currents. But maybe it could be used as a makeshift TIG welder with a gas bottle?!
Load testing connectors, switches and fuses is acually a cool application! I will look into that.
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Pass it on to someone that actually has a use for it and buy a proper battery charger.
And a warning note from Radio Wrangler on the UK vintage radio forum;
from https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/showpost.php?p=1469474&postcount=33 (https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/showpost.php?p=1469474&postcount=33)
This needs something a little stronger than a warning, maybe a full Achtung! with optional Klaxons.
Using regulated power supplies to charge batteries is a high-risk occupation. Power supplies weren't designed to get power IN at their output terminals. In most cases this can blow output transistors as the reverse Vbe rating isn't enough. Posh power supplies have 'down programming' a shunt transistor to pull the output down if the voltage knob is wound back. Inevitably these aren't beefy enough to pull a serious battery down.
In HP we had a steady repair queue for power supplies needing to be fixed. Nearly all in winter when people had tried to use them as battery chargers!
If charging a batttery, include a series diode
David
David
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could possibly be used for electroplating and/or rust removal - albeit a tad over-engineered for these applications!
cheers,
rob :-)
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Charge huge banks of capacitors in parallel, discharge them in series.
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- spot welding battery packs
- test the triggering current for mains circuit breakers
- electrolysis
- strong electromagnets
- turn red hot and melt metals
- open a wormhole, warp drive, etc.
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Pass it on to someone that actually has a use for it and buy a proper battery charger.
And a warning note from Radio Wrangler on the UK vintage radio forum;
from https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/showpost.php?p=1469474&postcount=33 (https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/showpost.php?p=1469474&postcount=33)
This needs something a little stronger than a warning, maybe a full Achtung! with optional Klaxons.
Using regulated power supplies to charge batteries is a high-risk occupation. Power supplies weren't designed to get power IN at their output terminals. In most cases this can blow output transistors as the reverse Vbe rating isn't enough. Posh power supplies have 'down programming' a shunt transistor to pull the output down if the voltage knob is wound back. Inevitably these aren't beefy enough to pull a serious battery down.
In HP we had a steady repair queue for power supplies needing to be fixed. Nearly all in winter when people had tried to use them as battery chargers!
If charging a batttery, include a series diode
David
David
I would also add that this power supply, and others in this series, incorporate a settable over-voltage detector which triggers an SCR crowbar on the output. If charging a battery without a diode, an over-voltage pulse or erroneous setting can trigger the detector, and BAM! the SCR and other components in the path are toast.
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Not only that, a shutdown (due to thermal limiting for example) will also trigger the SCR and thus blow the power supply when there is a battery attached. I've seen the internals of an HP supply to which that happened (the owner had slowed the fan down so much that the cooling wasn't effective enough).
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Can you crank it up to 12V ? You can start your car when your battery is flat ;)
But then he has to break his back again lugging it down the stairs to get close to his car. :-DD
Block and tackle or a chain lift out of the window will fix that problem :-)
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Can you crank it up to 12V ? You can start your car when your battery is flat ;)
100A is below a typical cranking current, although interestingly 10V would be adequate*; the voltage at a starter motor's terminals can be as low as 7 or 8V due to losses in the battery cables.
*EDIT: If you connected the psu directly to the starter motor (rather impractical in most cases).
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Use it power some TEC modules to make a big thermal test chamber.