And so begins yet another needlessly complex project. I should disclaim before the talk of how dangerous dealing with multi-kV systems is and how I'll hurt myself that I'm in my last year of an electrical engineering undergrad, so I know how to work with high voltage safely.
I'm in the design stage for a set of DIY ESLs (a jazzman-inspired segmented wire stator design), and I'm thinking about my amplification options. As a starting point, I'll probably just use some MiniDSP plate amps and a transformer, but as a fun electrical engineering project, I want to build a direct drive amp system and completely remove the transformer from the equation. I've looked into a few topologies but I figured I'd ask the room here and see if anyone has any particularly good leads on designs or high voltage rated components.
Option 1 is a class AB MOSFET design based on this design. The schematic on that website is known to be inaccurate (connections where there shouldn't be, the random pointless diode), but I've got a working version simulated, and it shouldn't be too hard to expand that from a +/- 1kV design to +/- 3kV to match my stator bias voltage. The main reason why I'm not particularly enthused with this design is it would mean chaining a stupid number of fets to get the voltage rating I need using easily available 500V FETs, or shelling out for some even higher voltage units that I have a suspicion might not sound the greatest as they're designed for power regulation.
Option 2 is to go a little crazy with a class D topology using a similar output transistor stack for voltage requirements. Only reason this is really on the table over the class AB is it gets rid of some analog design screwyness and lets me easily do an optically isolated connection to a digital driver and DAC, preventing me from accidentally zapping all my other gear with a few kV. (plus bonus power efficiency)
Option 3 is to go full insanity and go for a tube amp. The thought here is that there should be tubes available that can directly handle my whole 3kV target voltage and then some without having to resort to stacking them like the FETs in the other design. The problem with this is that I have very little experience selecting tubes for a design. FETs and BJTs I can just slog through Digikey's parametric filters, find things that match my specs and pretty much call it a day at that, but AFAIK there isn't really a good parametric database of tubes out there that would let me find appropriate tubes for my output section.
If y'all have any wisdom on useful designs, good FETs or tubes to use for these, anything like that, I'd be interested to see it, or if you think that it's stupid overkill and I should just put my time and money into some good quality transformers and normal amps, all input is welcome.
I'm in the design stage for a set of DIY ESLs (a jazzman-inspired segmented wire stator design), and I'm thinking about my amplification options. As a starting point, I'll probably just use some MiniDSP plate amps and a transformer, but as a fun electrical engineering project, I want to build a direct drive amp system and completely remove the transformer from the equation. I've looked into a few topologies but I figured I'd ask the room here and see if anyone has any particularly good leads on designs or high voltage rated components.
Option 1 is a class AB MOSFET design based on this design. The schematic on that website is known to be inaccurate (connections where there shouldn't be, the random pointless diode), but I've got a working version simulated, and it shouldn't be too hard to expand that from a +/- 1kV design to +/- 3kV to match my stator bias voltage. The main reason why I'm not particularly enthused with this design is it would mean chaining a stupid number of fets to get the voltage rating I need using easily available 500V FETs, or shelling out for some even higher voltage units that I have a suspicion might not sound the greatest as they're designed for power regulation.
Option 2 is to go a little crazy with a class D topology using a similar output transistor stack for voltage requirements. Only reason this is really on the table over the class AB is it gets rid of some analog design screwyness and lets me easily do an optically isolated connection to a digital driver and DAC, preventing me from accidentally zapping all my other gear with a few kV. (plus bonus power efficiency)
Option 3 is to go full insanity and go for a tube amp. The thought here is that there should be tubes available that can directly handle my whole 3kV target voltage and then some without having to resort to stacking them like the FETs in the other design. The problem with this is that I have very little experience selecting tubes for a design. FETs and BJTs I can just slog through Digikey's parametric filters, find things that match my specs and pretty much call it a day at that, but AFAIK there isn't really a good parametric database of tubes out there that would let me find appropriate tubes for my output section.
If y'all have any wisdom on useful designs, good FETs or tubes to use for these, anything like that, I'd be interested to see it, or if you think that it's stupid overkill and I should just put my time and money into some good quality transformers and normal amps, all input is welcome.