January 10, 2025 - Using the EVO to Prevent Damage on High Voltage Products

Since acquiring Directed Energy, we have performed repairs on a myriad of current and former products. Because of the widespread use of DEI’s high voltage pulse generators in universities and national labs, many of these repairs have been on units from our PVX line. If used correctly, they are very hearty devices. We have seen units that have been in service since the early 1990s and after minor repairs and recalibration, will likely be functional for another 30 years and beyond. When these units do fail, it is usually due to one of a few common pitfalls. Of these, there is one thing customers do that is responsible for the majority of PVX malfunctions: applying the external DC high voltage too quickly.

For example, our PVX-4110 is capable of outputting 10,000 volts and has a maximum power dissipation of 100 watts. It is best to enable the unit and its timing generator, then enable the high voltage DC power supply at 0V and slowly turn it up until it reaches 10kV. The mistake that some users make is that they enable everything, then enable the power supply when it is set to 10,000 volts. This creates a situation where the power supply must charge the unit to a very high voltage in an extremely short period of time. This, in turn causes a massive inrush of current. It is this current spike, not the potential difference, that causes the failure.

Turning the voltage up slowly can be somewhat inconvenient, especially in a fast paced testing environment. It takes about 2 minutes to get up to 10kV at a sufficiently safe rate, which is a long time to stand there turning a knob! Luckily, there is a way to do this much more efficiently using the Heinzinger EVO power supply. These supplies can be purchased with a ramping feature. This allows the user to set a certain rate in volts per second, at which the voltage will increase. They can then enable the supply and it will safely bring the unit up to full voltage over the course of a few seconds or minutes, allowing the user to perform other tasks in the meantime.

See it in action!