Guru
Joined: 09/08/2007
Location: AustraliaPosts: 4406
| Posted: 01:05pm 07 May 2017 |
We are going to need a choke that may see a couple of hundred peak amps or more, and while testing at that current is possible, its not really practical.
The solution is to test just the magnetic core with its air gap with a larger number of turns than you plan to eventually have. Find out how many ampere turns saturate the core.
Its not too difficult to build a choke tester that goes to thirty or fifty amps peak, and that should be more than sufficient for testing just about anything.
You don't need to test at high dc voltage.
Twenty to thirty volts maximum will be fine, even if the choke is going to be finally used at a much higher voltage.
It just means the current will build up more slowly, and you test at a lower switching frequency.
A solar buck regulator inductor might run at 300 volts and 20 Khz.
Testing it for saturation at 30 volts and 2 Khz will be perfectly valid.
Or 15 volts and 1 Khz.
So you can very likely use whatever parts you already have to build one of these, and get some very useful results. All jolly good fun.
Cheers, Tony.