You know that fancy looking motor with the three or four funny looking wires sticking out of it? Yeah, you know the one I’m talking about! Yup, that’s a 3 phase motor! Well wouldn’t it be fun to get that thing working through your normal single phase household supply … or better yet, from a DC power supply 🙂 Well come on in and have a look at my design for a 3 phase power supply. The supply generates a low voltage (<18 Volt) low current 3 phase sinosoidal waveform. This waveform is used to switch high power MOSFETs on and off producing a 3 phase high current square wave output. Yes … yes you’ll get all sorts of harmonics and noise driving the motor from a square wave … but, hey – at least it’ll work. Note that this design hasn’t been tested in real life yet! Only, good ol’ spice simulations.
Disclaimer: This is a post from a number of years ago, namely from August 28, 2012. It was lost after my old blog got hacked. I’ve recovered this using the wayback machine and made some minor modifications.
Well … let’s start with some pictures. At some point I’ll update this article with details about the design. But, try as I might, I just don’t have the time right now. I know what you’re thinking, that 1n4148 diode doesn’t look right, does it? … Well! Its not! … I warned you. Only spice simulation so far.
You’re probably wondering what the actual spice simulation looks like. Well, wonder no more … I won’t leave you a wandering! Its worth noting that this supply takes about one second for all three phases to be generated at full duty cycle and at 120 degree phase difference.
