EEVblog #268 - Xantrex 300V 4A Power Supply Teardown

Teardown Tuesday time.
What's inside a professional 1200W Xantrex XFR300-4 300V 4A rack mount power supply?

[chielvandesande]

Sometimes an old video is exactly what you need. 

DaveCAD always makes me smile. It must be the smiley logo.

[joaquinaguirre]

Super good! Thank you again Mr. It help me a lot. God gave you a good gift your brain.

[EEVblog]

No, the displayed stats are temporarily frozen for technical reason to de to CDN server updating and things like that. Partner do no lose stats, or view earnings as a result, as the stats are still counted, just not displayed real-time.

[TheAnalogKid]

MADE IN CANADA.  Hey, we export more than just maple syrup and snow, eh.

[Afrotechmods]

Out of every engineer I know you have the best handwriting and drawn diagrams. I suspect you are secretly a graphic designer ;)

[EEVblog]

Yes, of course. They just look like crimp connectors. No way you'd actually crimp them! Yeah, likely thermal epoxy or some such to hold in there.

[Nermash]

600V 2A version probably has another set of output caps in series with the existing 400V cap, that is why they placed those jumpers on 300V model...

[EEVblog]

They are now one and the same company, owned by Ametek. This unit is now sold under the Sorenson brand name by Ametek, but is originally from the programmable supplies division of Xantrex, which Ametek bought out a few years ago.

[patryxpz]

It makes me feel so happy when I'm watching your vblog.Your enthusiasm give me strength and faith - really! Thank You Dave!

[ForViewingOnly]

Awesome video. I can't claim to understand it all but I learn something new with every teardown. Cheers Dave.

[whiskeyify]

thx Dave ...for showing us the inside of that unit...i'm not an engineer but I do enjoy fixing electronic stuff and it was neat to see you explain what each component is and what it does.

[quilegarrett]

Hi, love the videos, watched a few now, I'm an engineering and maintenance manager in England, I was looking around for some videos for one of the apprentices to follow as he wants to be based more on electronics, I've recommended your videos to him... also I would recommend that you maybe do some form of school/college lecturing or online paid tutorials. Love the videos, Great work, no bullshit, no baffle, just good quality skip raiding and informative videos, Cheers for sharing!

[EEVblog]

Youtube stops the view counter at around 300 for a day or two for fast view count videos. The view counts are still collected but not updated. It happens for all popular videos and channels, it's a system efficiency thing.

[AintBigAintClever]

5:50 - I'd guess one relay for the soft-start and the other for overtemperature shutdown (hence the thermocouple), perhaps the thermo circuit has its own little rectifier and cap setup, enough to keep the circuit running while the relay shuts down the supply to the main rectifier and therefore the rest of the unit.
15:00 - you'll see the same method in the APC SmartUPS VT UPSes, they use big metal spacers and TORX bolts to link the 6.67kVA single-phase power modules to the 20kVA three-phase motherboard.
16:25 - possibly designed for two caps in series (for the 600v version of the supply perhaps)? No need for the second cap on this board, so just link it out and leave the one cap across the whole supply.

[zpower]

I use these at work, they are rack mounted and controlled by custom software via GPIB. In some cases we have the entire rack mounted in a vehicle for mobile operations. They are extremely well made and reliable. They cost many thousands of dollars each so unless you are working for a huge corporation, or government or acquire one at a surplus auction, forget about playing with one.

[johnfranks]

its easy to do with common tools... secure one end of the two wires to your bench (vise or tied around a nail), chuck the remaining ends up in a portable drill, put a little tension on the wires and let it rip. the result is a perfectly twisted pair as loose or as tight and you want it.
-jc

[AnythingSlowMotion]

Nice, I need a power supply like this. Ill also be looking forward to Tuesdays.

[DJackturbo]

the energy in that power supply is over

[JeffEdlund]

"Please excuse the crudity of this model. I didn't have time to build it to scale or paint it." LOL!!! --Doc in Back to the Future!
Love it Dave!! I am a live-long fan now!
-Jeff
p.s. I bought my first oscilloscope off ebay a couple days ago. BK Precision 2120. We'll see how it fires up when it arrives.

[JerryBiehler]

A little late to the party, but...

The second relay is a strapping relay. This changes the configuration of the cap bank for 120v or 240. Typically these power supplies are strapped for 240 in standard. When you power it up off of 120v the circuit senses the voltage and switches the relay which turns the input into a voltage doubler. Also the two 10k resistors are usually referred to as leveling resistors. It is not pretty when one fails. The caps rupture spilling stinky smoke/steam.