Samles SSW2000 inverter early limit (2023 Update)

I've got an SSW2000 repair that seems to be turning into a science project.

The customer bought it cheap off Kijiji. It didn't 'go'.

I found all 10 of the 30A automotive fuses blown, suggestting that the last thing done to it was a reversed battery connection. None of the DC inverter fets were damaged - This section proved to run when a normal downsteam load was present.

The two main HV bulk caps were dried out and had vented oton the wrapped heatsink. This over a long enough time period that the vented material had collected air fluff as it dried.A small spot of vented material had been deflected onto the LV driver control board, bridging board vias and requiring scrubbing w alcohol to remove.

One side of the inverter bridge was shorted through the switching fets. When replaced, the recapped inverter ran normally under lighter loads (below 500W).

I might mention that one of the unit's fans was dead, as well.

There is a small visible nonlinearity in the negative-going sine output 'increasing' edge, which looks increasingly like undamped response as load increases. This (negative generating pwm) was the side of the bridge that had failed previously. At some point of increasing load, the negative going sine output flat-tops - coincident with the positive going side cutting out completely on its falling edge, then the unit latches off to an overload limit.

I'm not sure if this performance is aggravated by the loading method - resistive through a variac, so any DC imbalance can result in largish mag current imbalance.

Input to the low frequency AC limiting circuit seems normal, though it is designed with a ridiculously high impedance - a multimegohm RC filter from a 70milliohm sense resistor - possibly to cut down on C size. It floats on the swinging polarity of the negative bulk caps. Even some of my go-to diff probes leak enough to make this a 'hands-off' test point while in operation, but what I can see of larger signal stuff at 50:1 diff looks normal.

There are no schematics available for the 3x control cct boards, which are basically 339s and 324s working with schmitt triggers and flip flops. Gate drive is optoisolated x4 with DC restored bootstrap power on each. LF AC reg (tl431)and fault signals are optoisolated

A main board schematic is available on groups.io in Electronics101. This shows that any control cctry components on the main board are basically concerned with fan control or external comms. Red detail indicates modifications not present on production (this) units - again mainly fan control.

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Any ideas or similar experience out there?

RL

Housekeeping supplies are reverse polarity protected, simple and solid. AC voltage output LF amplitude is well regulated.

Reply to
legg
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Specs:

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User manual, which includes some troubleshooting hints.

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YouTube videos showing SSW-2000 repair (5 parts)

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Text accompanying Part 5:

"Samlex provided me with the main PCB schematics, and a new updated input drive circuitry daughter board. It was an updated design and more reliable. I changed out all the input FETs with some quality International Rectifier brand, and input caps to Nichicon brand with a higher voltage rating. A few drive transistors burnt/shorted and replaced those."

Maybe give Samlex a call and ask for a better schematic?

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Samlex would not release schematics or service info.

I have read most of the available manuals and can assure you that this isn't a battery supply issue.

I saw these youtube videos, and low limiting wasn't one of the issues the guy tackled. He coaxed a dead driver board out of Samlex to get the thing going, finally. Not sure he loaded it above a KW.

He did a lot of random recapping and replaced a fan driver transistor.

I can't see anything here below 400W load that would be an issue above that power level. I typoed the AC current sense value - ~15mR (seven resistors in parallel causing me to expectorate the 70mR figure).

Have measured and tack-on substituted most of the power filter film caps without joy.

Will be doing things like swapping over parts from one phase to the other, to see if symptoms follow, but this will involve some serious (de)soldering on light weight copper boards.

Will need to cut power copper traces to check currents - again, more science project than repair.

Ugh.

RL

Reply to
legg

I've cut tracks to monitor power fet current in the offending side of the bridge, and see noticeable crossconduction there under all load conditions, when pwming.

The fet driver board, powered and running in isolation, shows no gate drive issues - dead time is actually generated on this board. ~500nS should be sufficient with 10R series gate resistors, and there is no difficulty demonstrated in driving capacitive loads.

A modest negative 'off' bias is developed by zener/dc restoration on a series coupling capacitor.

It's basically just an isolated buffer with full fet control deveoped in a separate small signal section.

The presence of cross-conduction makes no sense, if the gate drive circuit is testing functional, though it would easily be attributed as causal in early limiting of the phase arm.

RL

Reply to
legg

A solution is found accidentally - could get >1KW out of this when a diff probe was attached between the AC vreg divider point and the floating reference ground for that section. That's between the junctions of R27/R28/R56 and the 'bottom' of VR1.

This is the rectified but unfiltered AC output, to provide feedback for 60Hz voltage regulation.

Why? Who the hell knows. I tacked on a 100pf capacitor, burned the thing in and booted it out the door.

RL

Reply to
legg

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