big DIY power supply

I dabble in all types of DIY projects, butfind my 60V, 5 Abench power supply to be limiting. I do have six (6)12 V, 27 A(325 watts)server power supplies and it would be great to combine them all to get up to 72 V or162 A (1950total watts) for testing scenarios and components. I already identified and tested the positive and negative 12 voltpin outs(all 6 are thesame make and model).What's the easiest way to build a variable power supply from these server power supplies?

P.S. - 162 A(for 12 V)is a bit crazy and while I do have a big inverter and 2/0 gaugecable &equipment to handle it, I likely won't be going over 50 A at any voltage (so 4 gauge cable max).

Use dps1200 instead and you dont need as many and get more Power

You need to remove some points inside to get it going since the chassi is tied to 0. IF you dont you fry them

daromer said:

Use dps1200 instead and you dont need as many and get more Power

You need to remove some points inside to get it going since the chassi is tied to 0. IF you dont you fry them

Click to expand...

I already have the 6 spares on hand. Plus I want to be able to get up to 72 V andI can't stuff 6 x HP DPS1200's in a small/medium enclosure. Plus the 6 I have add up to 1920 watts which is exactly 80% of a common 20 A (120 V) AC circuit (I would only be able to useone DPS1200 on a given AC circuit).

Also, I thought it was always best to spread out aload over multiple cells (in this case the individual power supplies)for efficiency??

Note daromer's comment about the outputs having the 0V tied to ground.
If you want to use them in series, you have to modify the supplies first to remove the ground linking so the output is isolated.

Crashintoty you spread the load always when in series. But it all depends on how much current you need



Note that for parallel of them you need to make sure they can work with it. Like paralelling diodes...
In series its MUST that you can remove the neutral from ground.

Hi !

I've done a very similar project 2 years ago. My goal was to have a power supply that delivers 0-50 Volts / 0-20 Amps -> 3 standalone outputs.

I used 5 server power supplys 720 Watt each. As photos tell more than 1000 words: have a look at them.

I hope, i can give you some new ideas.

cu

Jens