New Industry Products

Kepco Adds Waveform Generator to Bipolar Power Supplies

October 24, 2005 by Jeff Shepard

Kepco Inc. (Flushing, NY) added a new internal waveform generator to its 1,000 W bipolar power supplies, which combines segments of a sinusoidal waveform, triangular waveform, a ramp, a sawtooth waveform, and a square 50-percent duty cycle pulse, plus dc to create a variety of arbitrary waveforms (3,933 points per basic waveform can be programmed with arbitrary, phase relationships). The resulting waveshape can be repeated from 1 to 255 times. For count 0, the waveshape is executed indefinitely until a stop command is received. The waveshape graphics are displayed on a panel-mounted LCD display, which also displays both settings and actual output values.

The programmed waveshapes can be used to control either voltage or current with both positive and negative values. Voltage mode bandwidth is dc to 2 kHz. Current-mode bandwidth is dc to 0.8 kHz. Alternatively, varying amounts of "noise" can be added to a dc output to gauge the effect on a test subject. With the built-in arbitrary waveform generator, much more complex waveforms can be made to drive the kilowatt-sized power amplifiers to do test and simulation work.