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In Reply to: RE: Alex... posted by Al Noakes on October 27, 2014 at 12:50:27
When adequately "sized", they do absolutely perfect. The filament lights up effortlessly and reliably.
I have initially used higher quality 105VA units for each 813 (10V 5A). Higher quality units already include overload protection (they simply power down when overheated or overtaxed), short-circuit protection (they power down until the short-circuit cause is solved and removed), no-load condition (they simply do not turn on, although buzz can be heard from the inside of the units).
The second step was to use a 160VA unit for both tubes, and in the end I added another secondary to power the driver and CF tube (6.3V 1A approx.). The 160VA unit is a cheap but well made Chinese product and it powers everything up without a fuss, is rather cold in operation even after several hours, and has a very diminutive size.
You can see several illustrations on my blog - the small black box is the modified transformer with 3 secondaries... compare that to the size of (even) SMPS power supplies, let alone adequately sized power transformers, diode bridges, (someone mentioned chokes?!)... not to mention the heat dissipated by the regulators if you were to use them.
With all that, the most important feature is noise - I am unable to hear any. It's as "noiseless" as if the tubes were indirectly heated. Sounds almost too good to be true - but true it is.
******
http://rh-amps.blogspot.com/
Follow Ups:
'Sounds almost too good to be true - but true it is.'
A potential 'iron-law' breaker . I like that :) Any suggestions on a unit that could do that 5V 10A filament ?
Al
5V 10A is 50VA after all, so any unit capable of 50W should be able to do it: consider it a light bulb! In practice, I would suggest a 105VA unit for each or a 160VA unit for both 5V 10A filaments.
10A means thicker wire, but since you must use stranded or Litz, this translates to "bifilar wound" secondaries used in parallel.
For 813s, I ended up making 4 turns of 1.5mm2 stranded isolated wire for 10V 5A. For 5V 10A I would do just 2 turns and parallel the two windings for double current. On the primary side nothing changes, it's 50VA.
BTW, the VT127 seems to be 4V 1.25A, and indirectly heated at that? What is the direct heated tube that you are going to use with 5V 10A filament?
******
http://rh-amps.blogspot.com/
"5V 10A is 50VA after all, so any unit capable of 50W should be able to do it: consider it a light bulb!"
Amperage at the output transformer must also be considered. There's no way to know whether the windings of the 50W unit (~ 4A) can handle the increased current, or how the user will reduce the voltage. Rewinding the transformer is best, of course, but if a resistive drop is used, the 10A current draw from the smaller unit will overload it. That's why I recommended a 160W supply (13.3A) for this purpose. It's roughly twice the cost, but still very inexpensive. Incidentally, as a result of recent discussions here, I opened one of the 60W supplies that I had purchased last year as a spare. The output transformer is conventional, not toroidal, much more difficult to rewind.
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Buy Chinese. Bury freedom.
If we consider the option to use original secondary wire, we need to provide a 160W unit like you're suggesting. If the amp is stereo, we can use it for both tubes, as 2 secondaries, as explained for 10Y and the 50W unit.
While cheap, it is not at all necessary to use a 160W unit to power a 50W load. If the secondary is removed and a new secondary with adequate wire is wound instead, a 105W unit is literally twice as powerful as needed. Besides the fact that there is no need to burn voltage across resistors (low values of discrepancy can be adjusted by unwinding a few turns from the primary), you would have to burn a lot of W to overload the unit! At 10A, .5 ohms is already 50W, so why throw away all that power and have to deal with huge dissipation? That's what got me to get in the HF AC story in the first place: unnecessary losses in power consumption and heat dissipation - so why would I get back to that once I took a different road?
Once you make it possible for 2x 50W of heaters and a few more W for the drivers to be effortlessly produced by a rather cold (40 degrees C after several hours of operation) and small box... you just cannot get back to burning excess voltage in heat.
As for 50W, imagine 2 "normal" mains transformers. One is 10V 5A, the other 5V 10A. They would be identical size, wouldn't they? The difference would be in the secondary wire thickness and turns number... but if we assume the transformer secondary is bifilar, 2 secondaries of 5V 5A each, than you can do both options with the same transformer. In series 10V 5A, parallel 5V 10A. It's literally as simple as that. The same is valid for the HF AC output transformer, only the size is very much different, as well as the type of wire used (both are frequency dependant).
******
http://rh-amps.blogspot.com/
A 10A filament will need a 160W transformer. You'll need to remove turns from the secondary of the output transformer to reduce it to 5V. You might also want to install a couple low value resistors to "trim" the final value (that's what I do in my 211 SETs).
I searched eBay for "160W electronic transformer" while writing this and came up with quite a few hits for 120V and 220V versions. Unfortunately, none of the listings show the inner workings, so there's no way to be certain if the output transformers are toroidal. On the other hand, none of them appear to be potted, so it's a simple matter to pop one apart and look. At worst, you'll lose $15 for your effort.
Just so you know, where Alex and I primarily differ in all this is the operating frequency. Alex is using newer transformers that operate at 30kHz or so out of the box. The transformers I modified years ago are running at 65kHz. Lynn Olson cautioned me at one time regarding the possible side effects of using such a low frequency (65kHz), and although they sound fine to me, I do wish they were operating at 100kHz or more. In fact, if memory serves, Davie Berning's amps use a minimum frequency of 250kHz. I suspect the upper frequency limit of these little transformers is determined by the capacitance of the active devices. Someday I'll revisit this, just to see if they can be made to do better.
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Buy Chinese. Bury freedom.
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