Guru
Joined: 13/10/2014
Location: AustraliaPosts: 2260
| Posted: 08:35am 04 Aug 2026 |
I just finished building one of the new WG power boards, this is the one with two very small vertical mounted gate drive PCBs. The power board is slightly shorter than the old board, and it allows the FET ferrite beads to be fitted without any gymnastics on the High side drains, really nice!
This new power board is the simplest and quickest board to build of all, however the SMD gate drives PCB's are time consuming, but they are easy to build with plenty of room between components. As usual, the trickiest parts are the resistors and caps, but that's coming from someone who dislikes soldering tiny SMD components anyway, and it took me longer as I was checking every component before and after it was soldered in.
This is my first build of the new board with its revised construction and layout, so I also noted the things that might trip up new builders, there will soon be some people building this inverter, likely some with little or no experience, I now feel confident that this is indeed the best version for them to build.
It's definitely the best version of all from a construction point of view, especially the revised FET layout and Isolated supply mounting, it's pretty close to fool proof now.
Anyway, before calling it a day, I fitted four FETs, the test Toroid and chokes, NO caps, powered it, it worked first go
I'll make another tomorrow, should be a lot faster this time.
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Edited 2026-08-05 08:43 by KeepIS