Last night I made some progress on the diodes for my HVDC Tesla Coil supply. I am using the low ripple, 6-pulse, 3-phase supply topology outlined on Richie Burnett’s page:
This means lots of diodes, in this case 360! That’s a lot of diodes to mount and connect, so I decided to keep things simple and use PCBs. The PCBs were designed in Eagle and made pretty cheaply in Malaysia – I’m over etching and drilling all but the simplest PCBs at home. I think they turned out fairly well:
For each diode string I’m using 60x 1N5408 3A 1kV diodes in series, for a total rating of 3A @ 60kV. Each PCB holds only one string, and six string are needed for the supply. Here’s a pic of one of the boards just prior to soldering:
And after soldering:
After a couple of hours bending, inserting and soldering components….two strings down and four to go!
