Hello all, I've been reading here for quite a long time and finally decided to get an account, because I've run into an issue that I cannot seem to come up with a way around.
Let me preface this by saying that I grew up playing with 480V three-phase in my family's machine shop, so I understand the basics fairly well. I have always enjoyed power electronics, but when it comes to waveforms, I get confused in a hurry.
To cut to the chase, I need to output a reasonably square AC wave at some serious power (~2.5 KW). How in the world would I go about doing that with analog circuitry? It's not that I have anything against micros, I just don't ave a pc at the moment so using one would be exceedingly difficult, and I'd like to learn more analog anyway. It's too easy now to just throw micros at everything.
An H-Bridge is the obvious topology to generate an AC waveform, but how could I drive the H-bridge to generate my wave? I vaguely understand integrated driver circuits, but some clarification would be greatly appreciated. I need a frequency somewhere in the neighborhood of 100-300Hz, so not exactly a super fast switching problem by any means. Precision or period stability is really not an issue here (I'm not really sure how to articulate my point here, what I'm trying to say is that it doesn't matter is one cycle is slightly longer than the next) . Being able to adjust the frequency is a bonus. I understand that I am switching very large currents (200A at peak current) and I will deal with the power dissipation appropriately. Large industrial device packages and plenty of heatsinking. I also understand that to keep switching losses low, I need a high current driver to keep the transistors out of their linear range as much as possible.
To allay any high-voltage fears, this is a very low voltage application. 35v maximum. I seriously appreciate any insight anyone can provide.
Let me preface this by saying that I grew up playing with 480V three-phase in my family's machine shop, so I understand the basics fairly well. I have always enjoyed power electronics, but when it comes to waveforms, I get confused in a hurry.
To cut to the chase, I need to output a reasonably square AC wave at some serious power (~2.5 KW). How in the world would I go about doing that with analog circuitry? It's not that I have anything against micros, I just don't ave a pc at the moment so using one would be exceedingly difficult, and I'd like to learn more analog anyway. It's too easy now to just throw micros at everything.
An H-Bridge is the obvious topology to generate an AC waveform, but how could I drive the H-bridge to generate my wave? I vaguely understand integrated driver circuits, but some clarification would be greatly appreciated. I need a frequency somewhere in the neighborhood of 100-300Hz, so not exactly a super fast switching problem by any means. Precision or period stability is really not an issue here (I'm not really sure how to articulate my point here, what I'm trying to say is that it doesn't matter is one cycle is slightly longer than the next) . Being able to adjust the frequency is a bonus. I understand that I am switching very large currents (200A at peak current) and I will deal with the power dissipation appropriately. Large industrial device packages and plenty of heatsinking. I also understand that to keep switching losses low, I need a high current driver to keep the transistors out of their linear range as much as possible.
To allay any high-voltage fears, this is a very low voltage application. 35v maximum. I seriously appreciate any insight anyone can provide.