Since I've just designed a 0-500V 50-500mA linear power supply, it would figure that I'd win an auction like this.
Today I won a surplus auction on a Buchler Instruments 3-1014A Electrophoresis power supply. In hindsight, compared to the eBay prices, it wasn't the world's greatest deal, thought not bad, and it was local so I didn't have to pay for shipping.
I popped the lid, everything looked well, and powered it up. Seems to work fine, at least from what I can tell. That said, I really, really would like a service manual or a schematic or even a simple user manual- some amount of documentation on this thing would be greatly appreciated. If anyone has one, or knows of someone who does, please let me know .
Now- I know next to nothing about electrophoresis power supplies, and after a quick google search I have a vague idea of what electrophoresis is. Visual inspection suggests that it's an old-school (1970s) switcher. It has a massive transformer and a high-voltage bridge rectifier (lots of diodes in series), and a pair of large oil-filled caps. There are also a pair of what I assume are chokes (they have a core gap, so I can't imagine what else they would be). It has two stud-mount SCRs, which I assume is being used for switching. My somewhat educated guess is that it is using the large xformer to step up the voltage, and the SCRs are being used for some form of switching regulation (PWM perhaps?). Again, this is all just a guess without a schematic.
Since I'm not too confident that I'll track down a schematic, do electrophoresis power supplies make decent bench supplies? I'm not sure what sort of noise and regulation specs are required for electrophoresis, nor how robust the supplies need to be (duty cycle, resistance to abuse, etc). I have intentions of using this for testing tube circuits, mostly those in excess of the 500V maximum output of the power supply I'm currently building.
I'll post some pics of the inside tomorrow.
Thanks,
H713.
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