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1. Overview
This is a report of the repair of an inverter purchased on ebay, having been described as “faulty -
the inverter suddenly stopped working. It just died”. Upon opening the case, it was obvious that the
unit had major areas of burning to the PCB, one chip had exploded, and there were several burned
resistors. Dismantling the unit revealed that there had been a couple of replacement components
fitted sometime, whether before or after the fire was not clear.
A search on the net showed that there was little or no information available, but a plea on the
newsgroup sci.electronics.repair got the component values for those which were too burned to
identify, and the type for the exploded chip.
Because of the extent of the fault, I decided that a circuit diagram (schematic) was required, so the
next few days were spent carefully tracing the circuit and drawing it up.
2. Circuit description
The inverter converts 12V DC from a vehicle or leisure lead-acid battery to 230-240V AC suitable
for a range of mains-powered appliances in Europe. It uses a two-stage converter to keep efficiency
up (quoted at 85 - 90%) and parts weight down (3.15Kgs). The first stage is a 12V SMPS driving
the transformer primaries at high frequency, and the second stage takes the high voltage from the
transformers, rectifies it and chops that at 50Hz to drive the mains voltage output. An additional
low-power secondary stage drives the 50Hz chopper and pulse-shaper through a 12V regulator.
The 12V battery voltage is supplied through a set of parallel-coupled 30A fuses directly to the
centre-tapped primaries of the six series-connected high-frequency transformers. The start and
finish of the primary windings are connected in parallel to six RFP50N power MosFETs per side
(again, in parallel - to increase the current handling and decrease the RDSON).
The 12V supply is also connected, via the front-panel on/off switch, to the KA3525A switch-mode
control chip and to the cooling fan.
The SMPS oscillator runs at about 4.5kHz and directly drives the output MosFETs (via the usual
gate-blocking resistors) from the push-pull outputs on pins 11 and 14. Error control is provided by
an LM393 op-amp, which is driven from the high-voltage side via a TLP734 opto-isolator.
Ten 2200µF electrolytic smoothing capacitors are placed on the 12V battery supply to iron out any
stray AC component. All of the timing capacitors are low-tolerance ceramic chip – there seems to
be no requirement for precision here!
2.2 High-voltage stage
BE WARNED: This stage runs at approximately 300V DC – and accidentally touching a live part
could be lethal. There are a couple of big capacitors which can store this voltage for up to an
hour or more – so be very careful! If you are unsure about anything, don't touch it, and call a
qualified engineer to sort it out!!
Here's where it all starts to get a big more interesting! The output of the high-frequency
transformers is bridge-rectified by four fast diodes (D1 – D4) and smoothed by two 330µF
capacitors. The resulting 300V DC is applied directly to a bridge switching output circuit
comprising four high-power MosFETs. These are switched to provide a 50Hz AC waveform at 230-
240V rms which is LC filtered by L1 and C3.
Output current is measured as a voltage drop across the source resistors (R29, R74 & R75) – at full
load, the source terminals of the lower two MosFETs will be at around 1V above ground. This
voltage is applied to an LM393 op-amp to trigger the overload shutdown.
3. Fault investigation
3.1 Visual before dismantling
Taking the lid off the case, I saw several areas of black carbon, concentrated around the four largest
power devices and around four smaller power transistors. There were several burned resistors, and
one IC which had exploded. The fuses were intact. An electrolytic capacitor had burst and an
adjacent power component had broken apart. There were several burned bits of PCB track.
After dismantling the unit, which involves removing all the screws securing the heatsinks to the
case and sliding the PCB out of the aluminium housing, a closer examination of the PCB revealed
that one chip had been replaced before and that there were a couple more breaks to the copper print
on the underside.
At this stage, a circuit diagram was needed, and since searches on the 'net were fruitless, I settled
down to draw one out. Several days passed.
3.2 Finding the burnt-out parts
A plea on the newsgroup (sci.electronics.repair) for someone who was prepared to take the cover
off another inverter and report back on the part numbers and resistor values was successful – I now
had somewhere to start! Searches on the 'net gained data sheets for all of the semiconductors
(except the four smaller power transistors – which are drivers for the output MosFETs) and the
circuit diagram began to take shape. The result can be seen on this web site in two JPG files. Once
the diagrams were to hand I could proceed to actually fixing the inverter.
3.5 Finally.....
There comes a time when all the analysis and substitution has to be put to the test. Connecting the
290V DC to the output MosFETS via a variable resistor, I found that the output was working, and
ramping the resistor to zero ohms, a nice AC output was obtained. I removed the resistor and re-
made the proper connection, and switched on again. Plugging in a 240V lamp, it illuminated, and
adjusting the Voltage pre-set adjusted the output to a steady 230V – even when I connected several
more lamps to increase the load.