Spellman DXM70N600X3547 power supplies on ebay -70kV 8.56MA

This forum is for specialized infomation important to the construction and safe operation of the high voltage electrical supplies and related circuitry needed for fusor operation.
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Rich Feldman
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Re: Spellman DXM70N600X3547 power supplies on ebay -70kV 8.5

Post by Rich Feldman »

Picked up fuses today, but didn't yet repeat the AC "power up" exercise.

Instead I tried the 24-VDC jump start trick, with gratifying success.
After separating fan from circuit board at the connector, ran fan and then circuit board from an adjustable bench power supply.
In the picture, PS common is connected to TP6 with an alligator clip. PS + is connected to fan header using a single receptacle contact.
1121062229.jpg
When voltage was ramped up to 24V over a few seconds, a relay clicked and a bunch of LEDs came on, including several red front-panel FAULT indicators. I bet the ramp was too slow to trigger "power-on reset" behavior. Switching the PS off and back on did the trick: no LEDs on except front panel power indicator and one internal green LED. Current = 0.28 amps. All test points labeled with voltages (+3.3, +5, +10, +15, etc.) had the expected voltage values. One pin in bottom row of J2 (the DA-15 connector) had +15 V on it. So far so good.

Guess the next step is to reconnect the 120-VAC input module, with a fresh fuse, and plug it in to see what happens. Got no experience with troubleshooting any SMPS, much less a ZVS with PFC input. Could a current-limited startup using a series ballast (bypassable with a manual switch) do any harm?
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Re: Spellman DXM70N600X3547 power supplies on ebay -70kV 8.5

Post by Andrew Seltzman »

I'd say try it without the ballast but with a lower amperage fuse, the power supply shouldn't draw much current to just power up the control circuits and would only need the rated fuse for running at full power. Perhaps start with a 2A or 4A quick blow.

If you plug in the Ethernet when 24V is applied, can you communicate with the supply?
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Re: Spellman DXM70N600X3547 power supplies on ebay -70kV 8.5

Post by Stefan Gustafsson »

I was able to acquire one the supplies as well. To bad after shipping it over to Europe it was DOA. One of the fuses are bad and the VR2 thermistor is cooked.
It also looks like one the capacitors is broken. If I measure the resistance over the capacitors it's zero ohms.

I have been able to start the digital part up using a 24v bench supply and Ethernet commands works so I'm hopeful. Thank you very much for that information.
I rewrote the mathlab code into a C program if anyone is interested.

I will start removing broken components until I can find the short-circuit and try to rebuild the power parts.

The unit is marked with 115V but the product manual says 180-265V input.
Andrew, can you find any other changes to the selected components that would make it impossible for me to run my unit on 230V as here in Sweden?
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Re: Spellman DXM70N600X3547 power supplies on ebay -70kV 8.5

Post by Jim Kovalchick »

I am not a coder and don't use MATLAB. Given that the GUI applet doesn't seem to be happy with modern versions of JAVA, I need to find a way to send TCP commands that works for a dummy like me. Surfing this morning I found a free utility called Packet Sender that it looks like it would work to send and receive data from a network based device like the DXM. I hope to try it soon, and I'll let the forum know how it turns out. I'm sure the trick will be in syntax.
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Re: Spellman DXM70N600X3547 power supplies on ebay -70kV 8.5

Post by Richard Hull »

Could someone supply an image of the HV transformer block and the multiplier diode/capacitor area? Also where does the back of the HV connector go to. Is this thing a driver for a stack or an x-ray head?
Some of this stuff must be potted if in this rather smallish box!
Just curious.

Richard Hull
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Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
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Re: Spellman DXM70N600X3547 power supplies on ebay -70kV 8.5

Post by Jim Kovalchick »

Can anyone help me with what the ASCII and hex strings for TCP packets should look like? The manual says format looks like for example <STX><22><,><ETX>
This probably means something to coders but not to me.

Also, any guesses on what the port number would be?
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Re: Spellman DXM70N600X3547 power supplies on ebay -70kV 8.5

Post by Andrew Seltzman »

The entire HV section is potted.

TCP_IP_spellman_DXM='192.168.1.4'; %IP address of spellman power supply
port_spellman_DXM=50001; %port to connect to supply (50001)
STX=char(2); %ASCII 0x02 Start of Text character
ETX=char(3); %ASCII 0x03 End of Text character


Ex, programming the DAC for voltage output would be 'STX,10,kV_DAC,ETX'
where kV_DAC=0-4095 = 0-100%
so the string for 10% output would be
char(2),10,410,char(3)

char(2) and char(3) are the ascii characters 0x02 and 0x03, not the character 2 and 3, all others in the string are literal character values
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Re: Spellman DXM70N600X3547 power supplies on ebay -70kV 8.5

Post by Andrew Seltzman »

I successfully built an insulating dummy plug for the supply for high voltage testing and ramped both supplies up to 70kV without issue.
SAM_5460.JPG
SAM_5461.JPG
supply1-test.jpg
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Re: Spellman DXM70N600X3547 power supplies on ebay -70kV 8.5

Post by Sarvesh Sadana »

After digging through my closet, I managed to find an old laptop that still runs XP.

I used a direct connection through ethernet, and got the applet to appear. However, I got a notification stating that it wasn't set up properly. It appears the interlock connection was open while running it remotely. I tried turning on the HV, but it immediately turned it off.

Anyone have any ideas on fixing this?
IMG_0345.PNG
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Re: Spellman DXM70N600X3547 power supplies on ebay -70kV 8.5

Post by Rich Feldman »

Some forward progress for this novice at network admin. Got me a crossover cable and some hints. Set laptop IP address to 192.168.1.1. From command shell in Windows 10, "ping 192.168.1.4" was successful. Browser access to http://192.168.1.4/Applet.html, from Chrome, brought some kind of No Java message.
From IE, after updating Java and adding that applet to Java's Trusted Exceptions list, I got the Spellman monitor page but could not get past the login prompt.
applet.JPG
Enough for tonight.

PS is still running on external 24 VDC. Needs to be tried on AC with a new line-in fuse.
If that looks promising, I think the short path to HV testing (for me) is to make an analog control panel like Dan (?) talked about. Nice trick about getting +10V from one of the internal filament-limit trimpots, but I'll probably just regulate the voltage from J2 signal named +15V. How about connecting the spare pin internally to TP1, which is labeled and measured to be +10V?
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Re: Spellman DXM70N600X3547 power supplies on ebay -70kV 8.5

Post by Peter Schmelcher »

Andrew I powered up the supply using the 24V fan idea and my supply works as expected. Low voltage test points are fine plus ethernet is good. The hobbs meter reports 225.9 hours HV On.

I think everyone should inspecting C149 33uF 450V for any signs of venting electrolyte before applying 120VAC!

The capacitor can top is a mechanical fuse that is designed to tear open under failure conditions. The top of mine bulged slightly and leaked. C149 might be the root cause of my damaged unit.

-Peter
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Re: Spellman DXM70N600X3547 power supplies on ebay -70kV 8.5

Post by Dan Knapp »

Pin 15 is not available as a spare on the custom version of the supply. See Andrew's Nov 22 post. Pin 15 is an additional interlock input. I need to post a revision of my analog controller circuit to reflect this. It also appears that the other (other than voltage control) inputs cannot be left floating as in my circuit diagram. My DXM is not yet producing HV, but I seem to be making some progress.
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Re: Spellman DXM70N600X3547 power supplies on ebay -70kV 8.5

Post by Jim Kovalchick »

Sarvesh,
You need to jumper the interlock pins to proceed. See Andrew's posts and the manual. Nice job getting the applet to run.

Rich Feldman,
You got to the same point I did with getting the applet to start and stall. I did the network settings the same way. I think the only way the applet will run is on an old version of JAVA.

Yesterday, I tried to use an app called Packet Sender to send commands as TCP packets to the unit. As I suspected, I really struggled with the syntax of the strings. You need to know a good portal number, and it seems that Andrew is correct that 50001 will work because I can get return strings back from that portal. My trouble is getting coherent instructions to and from the unit. The app is nice, but it want''s to translate ASCII strings into two digit hex and I'm sure that I am failing miserably at this.

After the holiday, I may try to teach myself enough Visual Basic to try that approach. ...and Kuba, no fair saying that it is the programming language of your grandfather. I don't know how old you are, but probably back before you were born I was entering machine code into an Apple one hex digit at a time because I was too poor to buy an assembler. Visual Basic is seems like a dream compared to that.
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Re: Spellman DXM70N600X3547 power supplies on ebay -70kV 8.5

Post by Rich Feldman »

A terminated ribbon cable and PC board header are in hand for my analog control "fixture". Thanks for the reminder about pin 15.

>> Pin 15 is an additional interlock input. I need to post a revision of my analog controller circuit to reflect this.

Thanks for drawing that up, Dan. While you're editing, please consider:

1. Change -75 kV to -70 kV in two places, to match the nominal voltage of DXM70N power supplies instead of their output connectors.

2. Change DB-15 to DA-15 in three places. The letter B was mistakenly carried over from DB-25 in the real RS-232 standard. (Both are D-sub connectors.)
dabcde.JPG
dabcde.JPG (25.31 KiB) Viewed 14326 times

3. Add the Zo values (5k,5k,10k) of the three analog monitor pins. That's important for controllers that have analog or digital panel meters, easily calibrated to indicate kV and mA.
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Re: Spellman DXM70N600X3547 power supplies on ebay -70kV 8.5

Post by Richard Hull »

Thanks Andrew for the full testing and the full, realized output of a working one of these units. It will be great to see someone use one of these to do fusion. I am a little concerned about the ultra low current capability of the device and whether there is an "auto kill" at exactly 8ma. This was frustrating to the VCU nuclear engineering folks who spent $$$$ on a brand new rack mount 30kv 10ma spellman supply. The moment they started to do fusion, the supply tripped offline. This forced a frustrating reset and re-approach to the fusion threshold. They have now spent more $$$$ for yet another beefier supply.

Super electronic supplies by the best manufacturers seem to auto protect as they hit the honestly rated limit on current and can catch and trip on 15ma bumps and burps in the gas conduction regime. This is one of their most nasty faults and crippling limitations for the amateur fusioneer. I guess we will wait and see.

The one good thing about a home brew HV supply that is metered very well is that there is not current trip point, be the supply a home made switcher or a classic hard-nosed linear type. The human being is in total control and not some engineered safety trip point working in the micro-second or millisecond time frame to shut the entire thing down. The homebrew will take the burps and bumps and the end user will never even see the metering jiggle.

My statement in many FAQs about one absolutely having to have 10ma of current in any HV supply before lower level, detectable fusion begins was a full running, stable, 10ma. Excursions and burps and bumps of 100ma or even more are possible as the user learns to apply the voltage needed to do fusion. The gas conduction regime rules the roost and a sudden strike of the glow at 28kv in a good system can easily draw a multi-millisecond 250ma bump! Your supply can't see this and trip out or you will never get there.

Sound defeatist? It's not me, it is the physics of what we are doing.

Richard Hull
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Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
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Re: Spellman DXM70N600X3547 power supplies on ebay -70kV 8.5

Post by Andrew Seltzman »

I've compiled the matlab m files into a stand alone program that ramps the supply up to 10kV, it should start ramping up the voltage when executed.
DXM_test.zip
(3.16 MiB) Downloaded 563 times
You will need the matlab runtime(free) on your computer to run the program
Get the Windows 64-bit version of the MATLAB Runtime for R2016a
https://www.mathworks.com/products/compiler/mcr/
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Re: Spellman DXM70N600X3547 power supplies on ebay -70kV 8.5

Post by Rich Feldman »

Attempted AC power-up was not so successful, but was a good learning experience.

Fuse board silkscreen says F1 and F2, both 10 A 250 V. My PS arrived with F2 blown. The fuse was ceramic, so not easy to judge the category of overcurrent that had made it operate. I used glass replacements.

Special tool 1: a nine-inch extension cord with male and female tab terminals. Allows power-up with full visibility of main board and fuse board. A continuity check, all the way from wallplug end of the IEC cord, showed line and neutral reversed. Spellman would never do that, would they? Problem went away when I substituted a different IEC cord. First cord had been miswired at the factory, before final molding of the connectors. :-(

With new 5 amp fuse at F2, and main board connected, DC resistance measured between wallplug blades was more than 10 k ohms each way. So no DC short circuit. Plug it in. F2 blows instantly, with small noise and light, leaving a couple of fused metal balls visible. I think that indicates a fault current at least a few times greater than nominal fuse value, but probably not 100 A, and certainly nowhere near a metallic short circuit current.

With new 10 amp fuse at F2, plugging in made F1 (as received) blow instantly. It's a BUSS GLH 10, with zigzag-shaped link. Two adjacent narrow points had opened, freeing one whole zig to rattle around in the tube. F2 appears to be undamaged. Did this just demonstrate the difference between fast-blow and very-fast-blow models?

Special tool 2, made decades ago: my "ballasting outlet". A regular duplex grounded receptacle in a regular metal box, with a 3-wire cord and plug for use as an extension cord. Except the two outlet sections are no longer wired in parallel, they are in series. Front plate is marked to show which wide slot is Neutral, which narrow slot is Hot, and which left and right slots are connected to each other. I tested this by plugging in two 300-W halogen worklights & getting dim light from both.

When I powered up the DXM70 with two new 10A fuses, and one 300-W lamp in series, the lamp came on & stayed on at almost full brightness. I forgot to measure the voltage drop across the DXM. Am suspecting a semiconductor problem, though as mentioned before, nothing looks or smells burned.

If the circuit board assembly isn't repairable, I would keep the unit just for the bottom half. Probably no active components down there, just transformers & capacitors and diodes. Connections from the upper half are a bundle of 4 similar black wires, a bundle of 2 similar black wires, and a cable of 5 colored wires to J86 "FIL FDBK". Would building a driver from scratch be much harder than building a turbopump motor driver from scratch, as reported here many times?
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Re: Spellman DXM70N600X3547 power supplies on ebay -70kV 8.5

Post by Andrew Seltzman »

Rich,

As far as possible places for shorts in the supply, check:

CR35 (the rectifier)
Q6 (STW30NM60D mosfet in the PFC system)
Q10 (STW30NM60D mosfet in the PFC system)
Q7 (IRFBG30 mosfet for a flyback converter that supplies power to the digital logic)
C161 (big blue electrolytic)
C160 (big blue electrolytic)
C149 (smaller electrolytic near the 2 big blue caps)

Notes:
Q6 and Q10 are in parallel
C161 and C160 are in parallel(the big blue caps)
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Re: Spellman DXM70N600X3547 power supplies on ebay -70kV 8.5

Post by Dan Knapp »

Thanks to Rich for picking up the errors on my previously posted circuit diagram for an analog control for the DXM. I've corrected the errors on the attached revised diagram as well as added the input and output impedances as suggested. In this revision I've added jumpers so as not have any of the control inputs floating. I have not actually built this yet pending a decision on whether my DXM is working OK and thus whether to keep or return it. At this point I'm still playing with a 9 volt battery/pot divider for the 0-10V inputs.
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DXM Control Box.pdf
Revision of previously posted diagram
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Re: Spellman DXM70N600X3547 power supplies on ebay -70kV 8.5

Post by Dan Knapp »

There is a cable with a CA11 connector listed on eBay:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Claymount-13025 ... SwXeJYL0sI
The seller is asking $400. It has a CA1 on the other end if anyone needs both. The price was lowered from $500, but it is still more than would interest me.
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Re: Spellman DXM70N600X3547 power supplies on ebay -70kV 8.5

Post by Andrew Seltzman »

I finished the HV cable for the supply
SAM_5467.JPG
SAM_5466.JPG
and have successfully tested with plasma and a neutron output
SAM_5465.JPG
At 45kV, 8.56ma about 1.5e6 n/s
neutrons-45kv-1,5e6.jpg
At 50kV, 8.56ma about 1.8e6 n/s
neutrons-50kv-1,8e6.jpg
Some notes about operating the supply on a fusor:
The supply does have an arc fault protection system that is fairly sensitive, when triggered it will momentarily reduce output voltage and then bring it back up to the set point. After a certain number of arcs in a given time window(about 5 arcs in a few sec) it will shut off the power supply. This does not present a problem with an occasional grid arc on a well conditioned grid, but is an issue with charge buildup on the surface of an unshielded HV cable(like the silicon one I have built). As the charge builds up on the outer surface of the insulating cable it will be attracted to a conductor and discharge, causing the arc fault to reduce voltage, this will cause the cable to pull away from the conductor and then attract once HV is re-applies causing another discharge. This repeated mechanical oscillation of the cable will trip the arc fault circuit.

Arc fault trip due to repeated static discharges from cable
neutrons-50kv-corona-fault.jpg
The HV cable will need a shield to prevent this effect, and possibly a semiconductive anti-corona tape layer between the silicon cable and the shield before higher voltages are attempted. Other then this effect, the supply operates very stably with a fusor and should help most people significantly increase their neutron output.
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Re: Spellman DXM70N600X3547 power supplies on ebay -70kV 8.5

Post by Dan Knapp »

Has anyone been able to figure out the login and password for the Spellman interface at 192.168.1.4?
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Re: Spellman DXM70N600X3547 power supplies on ebay -70kV 8.5

Post by Dan Knapp »

To answer my own question, after overlooking it multiple times, I found the login and password on p. 15 of the DXM Digital Interface Manual: username: admin, password: SHV_Applet.
These worked on my DXM using Internet Explorer on an old laptop running XP. I was able to access the Web Monitor and Control Applet and read the hours meter. My unit reads 173.1 hours.
With a high voltage probe inserted into the CA11 receptacle and the enable pins 11 and 12, and 12 and 15 on J2 connected, I can step up the voltage using the web interface. Starting at 1000V, I get the right voltage on the output and can step up to 1400 volts in 100 volt increments with the correct output voltage. The current setting was 0 ma; with the current set to 1 ma, I get an "under current" fault both on the web interface and the front panel LED. When I try anything over 1400 volts, I get an "under voltage" fault both on the web interface and on the front panel LED.
Trying Andrew's standalone Matlab program, it starts scanning and fails the same way. I've not yet been able to get Andrew's DXM Control2 program to run under Matlab, possibly because I'm running a 2011 versionof Matlab whereas Andrew is using a 2016 version of Matlab.
I am unable to get any output using the analog control inputs via J2. This is perhaps a clue to where the fault lies.
At this point, my DXM is close enough to running that I think I'll keep it and continue to play with it.
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Re: Spellman DXM70N600X3547 power supplies on ebay -70kV 8.5

Post by Sarvesh Sadana »

After connecting pins 11 and 12 on the J2 connector, the interlock closed and I was able to enable the high voltage.

Despite that, I still got a message stating that my DXM is incorrectly configured, and I was not able to set the voltage or current. What am I doing wrong here?
IMG_0351.PNG
Also, has anyone made any further progress regarding the group purchase of the HV connectors and cables? I'd much rather buy one than try my hand at making it.
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Re: Spellman DXM70N600X3547 power supplies on ebay -70kV 8.5

Post by Dan Knapp »

Sarvesh
Have you tried connecting pins 12 and 15? Pin 15 is a second interlock on this version of the DXM (see Andrew Seltzmann's post).
Have you logged in to the web interface? Login: admin, Password: SHV_Applet
Are you getting the "x-ray on" LED on the DXM?
Your post gave me a clue to my problem. You are showing a reading on the "LVPS-15V" where mine is showing zero. I'll try to check the 15V power supply.
Keep sharing; between the various owners of the two dozen supplies maybe we can turn up enough clues to make them all work.
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