Author Topic: testing the egs002 inverter board  (Read 147794 times)

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Offline RFburns

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Re: testing the egs002 inverter board
« Reply #105 on: March 31, 2016, 06:13:50 pm »
Great work again Oztules!

I agree that if there was a switching problem; at high load this would soon show its self (normally the smoke will come out) so how bad is the distortion (photo of the scope trace?)

But with the low temp rise and performance you are getting so far looks pretty good. RF
Get With It ,Get Over It , Get On With It ...Or Leave

Cheap and reliable wont be fast.
Cheap and fast wont be reliable.
Reliable and fast wont be cheap.

Offline oztules

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Re: testing the egs002 inverter board
« Reply #106 on: March 31, 2016, 06:44:04 pm »
Camera does not take real life pics very well of the trace.

You can see the wave where the trace has passed, and that is indicative of the real trace I see, camera sees the fluorescence differently, and greatly exaggerates the trace widths.. the dying phosphor is a better indication.

It is not criminal by any means, nor is it perfect.... That by the way is driving a 3kw load, and has been for the last hour or so.... heat sinks at 33c.. ambient is now 20... but a fair bit of warmth is coming from the transformer 60c, and being dragged into the fan as you can see from the bench set up, so it would be less than that.

Also remember the fan is spinning very slowly, can't hear it at all, as it is running 5v not 12.... seems about 1/4 speed or less... gentle air movement, and like I say probably bringing hot air from the transformer into it too.

The primary on the tranny was only 16mmsq, and 50-60 amps warms it up   fair bit. The 240v winding seems cool.
Heat loss at 75c seems to stabilise the tranny from tests over the last week, but it is way undersize

Here we are at around the 3kw mark, 2400 hot water, and the rest tv, freezer is running ( 700ltr), fridge is running...... still pretty good

5384-0

5386-1

..........oztules
Flinders Island...... Australia

Offline Antman

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Re: testing the egs002 inverter board
« Reply #107 on: March 31, 2016, 06:53:41 pm »
Oz Nice work on the testing. I cant believe how well it works for something so simple.

I think the next board revision after my current one I will do away with the EGS002 all together like yourself. Before I do this I want to play around with reading and sending commands to the IC from an arduino. I've never done something like that before but surely it can be done.

RF ill be sure to detail all my results here as I progress. If it all works to plan and I get a good result I may have to get a small run of boards pick and placed. It would probably be a bit difficult to assemble my board without the right soldering equipment and know how. Getting a PCB house to do the pick and place shouldn't be too pricey. Maybe about $200 per board including top quality components. Not as cheap as a PJ board but should be much higher in quality.

Offline oztules

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Re: testing the egs002 inverter board
« Reply #108 on: March 31, 2016, 07:10:03 pm »
"Oz Nice work on the testing. I cant believe how well it works for something so simple. "........ and your not the only one... I'm staggered... and a little dissapointed, I thought the journey would go on a bit longer than a single try out without modification

Here is a better try at it..... still to wide.. but you can see the distortion

Just boiled the jug as well, running 5kw for 3 mins... lucky the jug boiled in this time as over 100 amps through the 68a o/l would not run much longer I should think... must have been a near thing.

Took the scope into the house, used a 240:32v transformer for galvanic isolation... about 3kw with h/w and freezers and all the rest of the stuff running.... so I guess it is as true to life picture as you can get... ie this is what the house is seeing, not some test bench best scenario.....

5388-0

Be a good hour and a half now at 3kw, temp at 35c Shed temp is getting pretty warm now too will get ambient reading soon and edit this... yes edit is  27c air drawn into the fan, so only 8C above ambient@3kw.... excellent with the tiny air flow being used.

Edit 2 Now well after 12 oclock...so hot water now off. average power now down to 500 watts, incoming air 27c heat sink is 28c... coolest running unit I think I have seen.

Not going to be too concerned with distortion.RF

..............oztules
Flinders Island...... Australia

Offline RFburns

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Re: testing the egs002 inverter board
« Reply #109 on: March 31, 2016, 09:06:53 pm »
Oz nice :D; and thanks for the scope work ...maybe a snubber on the drive could be used to clean it up -just thinking out loud- .It seems like its certianly not affecting the performance but I am not that suprised considering the performance of the EGS002 board (actually a little suprised  :o that the wave form is not better since you didnt say it was a problem with EGS002 this would tend to say its more a layout thing)

Antman I am sure there wouldn't be much trouble off loading some pre populated boards for 12v 2Kw+ and look forward to your updates. RF
Get With It ,Get Over It , Get On With It ...Or Leave

Cheap and reliable wont be fast.
Cheap and fast wont be reliable.
Reliable and fast wont be cheap.

Offline Antman

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Re: testing the egs002 inverter board
« Reply #110 on: March 31, 2016, 09:11:48 pm »
Once mine is up and running I've got a new Rygol scope that can take screenshots and is fairly high resolution.

I might have to grab the thermal scanning camera from work too to see where all the heat is going  :)

Offline oztules

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Re: testing the egs002 inverter board
« Reply #111 on: March 31, 2016, 09:56:36 pm »
Yes RF not sure what it is, but I'm not loosing sleep over it at the moment.... may look at it further when the unit is not spread across the bench...but the cool nature of the fets is all I am interested in....... no heat is good... a nice wave with heat is not.... so I ll look into in the future I guess... we'll see.

Still don't know why the chip won't undervoltage either, yet keeps good voltage regulation.

I've got 56p caps on the crystal, as I am waiting for the 20pf to turn up.. wondering if thats a problem with the wave.

On the smaller test transformer, the i didn't notice the noise there, so it may be better inductor on the transformer line may be the trick too.

Your gonna have to give this a go  RF

.............oztules
Flinders Island...... Australia

Offline oztules

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Re: testing the egs002 inverter board
« Reply #112 on: April 01, 2016, 06:27:02 pm »
RF,
Ran it on bench test with different transformer ( 500w) and there is no distortion at all, It looks like the rats nest "design" of the inverter spread across the bench has something to do with it, it my even be a problem with the scope running on one 50hz inverter, measuring the next door inverter... and there may be some cross over on the bench someplace ( pick one...) Wave looks perfect

This pic is the best that would do with this camera and a cro screen. The wave is squeezed and stretched to amplify the possible problems.... there are none.

5400-0


 In truth there are no breaks, no blemishes or any other distortion, it is all in the way the camera works with this medium. It interacts with the grid lines, and takes multiple pics at the same time... so if I move, it looks like this

5402-1

So thats why it is thick and fizzy, it really is quite fine and clean now.
So it appears not to be a board layout problem at this stage... which is pleasing.

This one gives a better idea how the grid lines interfere and make it look split... notice where it crosses a grid line.
5404-2

And a blow up of it

5406-3

More obvious now ( click on above pic )

The symmetry is all wrong because of the curved glass tube etc etc... but it is good enough for me to play with... The wave is thin and true in real life anyway.

Ran anything I threw at it during the day.... tough as nails

............oztules
Flinders Island...... Australia

Offline RFburns

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Re: testing the egs002 inverter board
« Reply #113 on: April 01, 2016, 07:02:31 pm »
Bloody Magnificent! thats absolutely awesome  ;D .So now we just need a willing body to code a micro to take the place of the EG8010 and then we'll have to look for something else to do (actually thought this may have taken a little longer). RF
Get With It ,Get Over It , Get On With It ...Or Leave

Cheap and reliable wont be fast.
Cheap and fast wont be reliable.
Reliable and fast wont be cheap.

Offline oztules

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Re: testing the egs002 inverter board
« Reply #114 on: April 01, 2016, 07:13:20 pm »
I admit I was pleased and saddened when it came to life first go... I expected a long drawn out battle to find out why this technology is so expensive, when in fact a 2 dollar chip ( $1.50 some places ) takes care of all the nonsense intellectual property these folks are trying to protect and screw the rest of us.

This combined with a 3 dollar nano could do anything the fancy ones can do .. except ac coupling with a generator..... but there is new firmware that does that for the 8010 chips too from what I have seen.

I don't want that, so won't pursue that course, as there is nothing this won't drive on it's own, needs no co-generation.

The software is not so difficult, and there are plenty of ones to look at n the web for starters. Really only a jump table and scaling will do it.

End of the road for me anyway, the 8010 @ $1.50 is cheaper than any chip I could hope to program... so whats the point .

.............oztules
Flinders Island...... Australia

Offline Antman

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Re: testing the egs002 inverter board
« Reply #115 on: April 01, 2016, 10:29:26 pm »
Had a bit more time to play with mine today. I populated a new board and added a heat sink so I can test a little higher power.

All I had laying around were some crappy IRFZ48V Mosfets. With 8 mosfets total the board can handle 100w but that's about the limit. The layout is not ideal and the mosfets have heaps of switching loss. The high current tracks are way too small and need beefing up. Also the heat sink doesn't work the best since I just stuck the mosfets down with sticky thermal tape ;)

Oztules I agree with you on the programming. I wouldn't bother doing it from scratch when the 8010 does such a great job already. I'd jut work on integrating it with a micro to get the best out of it.


Offline Antman

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Re: testing the egs002 inverter board
« Reply #116 on: April 01, 2016, 10:45:02 pm »
Also did some testing on the output. The sine wave is far from perfect especially under no load but under a 50w load it's cleaned up a bit. I think once I make a proper power board with a decent layout the output will be a lot cleaner. Also tuning the gate resistors might help too.

Does anyone have a schematic of the PJ power board that I can look at to see if I'm missing anything?

Cheers

Offline ClockmanFrance

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Re: testing the egs002 inverter board
« Reply #117 on: April 02, 2016, 02:37:55 am »
Hi Oztules,

Congratulations......

I had every confidence that you would obtain a good result, and it looks like you have. My hat is duly doffed once again.

"I expected a long drawn out battle to find out why this technology is so expensive, when in fact a 2 dollar chip ( $1.50 some places ) takes care of all the nonsense intellectual property these folks are trying to protect and screw the rest of us."

Brilliant totally agree.......

Now some questions from this humble FOOL, who has very little knowledge of electronics, but is proceeding with the BigOzInverter that will have nobody elses bits in it. yippee.....

Questions on your "OzControl 8010 Board", in the most recent pics, and yes I am sad because I enlarge as much as possible to look see, you seem to be running a hybrid board from your 2 previous posted PCB layout drawings boards. ?
 Your latest board has the sense coil input, but you have retained the 3 Tr's, VR's the largeish tip35c, the 7812 & 7805.?
You don't seem to be running the big 2uf metal foil Cap.?
Any more info on the Crystal please.........?
I will enlarge the OzControl Board to span across the New 6-15kW PowerBoard heat sinks, similar fashion to PJ, as I have good results with forced cooling with that arrangement.

Lots of copper on your PCB, good, I love lots of copper with these hard working, any environment boards. Engineering wise we want lots and lots of copper, but its a bit of a battle getting PCB software community to understand this.

The large, A4 size, 6-15kW PowerBoard is coming along, hopefully by the end of next week they should be starting to be produced in China, funny really how we go full circle. With our compliments I will put a couple in the post to you, its the least we can do.

I have found, and yet another steep learning curve, that the PCB Software 'Target 3001', reasonable low cost, (a German company, yes don't laugh), can import my Engineering CAD DXF files and convert to gerber files, with some tweeks.
Its the tweeks I will need to sort out.

And finally.....SMA have at last put my monies back into my Bank account. A year later money back for a Sunny Island Inverter that locks you as a slave to SMA products, or puts your HZ up to destroy your domestic electrical appliances, just sheer madness........

Your work 'oztules' with this New Inverter, has given me, my Family, and Community, real Self Empowerment.

Many Thanks.




Offline oztules

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Re: testing the egs002 inverter board
« Reply #118 on: April 02, 2016, 03:05:32 am »
domestic supply looks very sad antman.... or was it in the scope... limited.
Edit for antman... I think it would be a good idea to have the voltage sense resistors as a daisy chain of a few more resistors...320v across those little resistors is asking for problems. I use 2x50k on each leg for this reason, and mine are physically bigger than yours.... just a comment.

Built what should be the final board this afternoon, plugged in the chips, and got a perfect sine wave on the bench transformer and supply...... so took it out to the shed and hooked it up to the the pj power board ( with gate mods)... and stood back waiting for the bang.... started just fine, nearly tea time so jumped straight in and plugged the air compressor in.... instant energetic start..... switch off and go for tea....

So thats where we are right now.

Clockman. hang back a bit with the control card, and in the next day...hopefully, this board will have been subjected to everything I can throw at it, and get a few hrs under it's belly at high load, but will wait till tomorrow for that when the daylight is available to carry the high loads.... the solar can put out over 100 amps... so that saves the batts from copping it before I go to bed later on.

I will put up the pdf, pics of this card from and messy back ( I plated most finer tracks to stop corrosion problems ), pcb circuit pic etc... then you can make one in your sink and test it out for real..... also the BOM of the parts list to fall out of the pcb program.
Will also check the component pin holes before putting up the pcb file proper....as I don't get them manufactured, I use any size pad for component making.... it's just for me usually  ....should be a five dollar board to make in china.

Will be happy to accept your boards too  :)



I am waiting for the CT's to come, so am using some from a cheap amp meter... won't make any difference. The scope of the current control is whoa to very high... so easy to set what you expect your limit to be,

I am still using the temp control as temp and stop.... must get to test how the inhibit line actually works, it may not soft start if tickled.. the temp does.... torroids won't accept this behavior.

Oh and crystal is 12mhz, and the CT is not there but the 2 pins at top right take the plug for it so it can be remote sensing.
The board you saw was done a few weeks ago... pic back there somewhere, but the converter boards had not come... so as soon as they did and the 2110 turned up ( courtesy of Steve Bliss), then it had to be tested pronto... and thats the one you saw/see there



............oztules
Flinders Island...... Australia

Offline oztules

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Re: testing the egs002 inverter board
« Reply #119 on: April 02, 2016, 03:15:46 am »
This is a pic of the board made this afternoon.
EDIT..... there is a mistake on the current diodes... do not make this board, or if you have already, then cut the tracks between the two anodes of the CT diodes and the two cathodes....duh! The anodes ned to be joined to each other and so do the cathodes.... but not the cathodes and anodes on the rectified side.

Here is pic of corrected part... the faulty one is at the end of post



5422-1

5424-2

5429-3

5426-4

...........oztules
and the pdf
* 80109A.pdf (43.32 kB - downloaded 660 times.)

BOM as it seems to be....will cross check when I get time.


"Comment","Pattern","Quantity","Components"


"","10PIN","1","A79"
"","SPADE","4","A51 A60 A61 A62"
"0r","AXIAL0.3","8","A1 A4 A13 A14 A17 A26 A34 A50"
"0r","AXIAL0.4","3","A27 A29 A52"
"0r","AXIAL0.5","1","A28"
"100r","AXIAL0.3","2","A77 A78"
"100uf 63v","RB.2/.4","1","A71"
"104","2PINCAP","3","A37 A75 A76"
"104","C1","2","A22 A23"
"104","C2","3","A10 A11 A12"
"104n","C1","1","A43"
"10k","AXIAL0.3","2","A38 A67"
"10k","AXIAL0.4","2","A6 A40"
"10k","POT","1","A47"
"10uf","C2","2","A5 A8"
"10uf","C2S","4","A18 A19 A20 A21"
"120r","AXIAL1.1","1","A7"
"13v","DIODE0.4","1","A39"
"1k","AXIAL0.3","2","A33 A63"
"1k","C2","1","A74"
"1n","C2","1","A73"
"1n4007","DIODE2","1","A59"
"2110","DIP14","2","A2 A3"
"22pf","C1","2","A30 A31"
"2k","POT","1","A46"
"2uf","11PINCAP","2","A9 A69"
"4007","DIODE2","7","A53 A54 A55 A56 A57 A58 A64"
"4u7","C2","3","A15 A41 A42"
"4u7","C2S","2","A68 A70"
"50k","AXIAL0.3","4","A48 A49 A65 A66"
"5v6","D3","1","A16"
"8010","801032","1","A72"
"fr107","D3","1","A80"
"fr107","D3","1","A25"
"led","LED","1","A32"
"tip35c","TO220V","2","A35 A36"
"xtal","RAD0.2","1","A24"


Yes it is messed up from how the pro's do it, but I never have used this before, so don't get too carried away with filling out the form for each component.

Here is the faulty part.... needs to separate the cathodes from the anodes... they are short circuit on the board..... makes the current signal pointless really....
Flinders Island...... Australia