Instituto Politécnico Nacional
Power electronics for a pulsed laser
IGBT flash unit, isolated driver, pulse current sensor and touch-screen control for an IPN laboratory laser.
We rebuilt the laser’s electronics end to end: capacitor bank charging, simmer, flash, interlocks and the pump, water, charge and fire sequence. The system was installed in the lab and its output energy characterized.
The IGBT snubber was a project in itself: we calculated and designed it to protect the high-power IGBT while switching the lamp current, on its own board with film capacitors and fast diodes.
What we did
- IGBT flash unit (four revisions)
- IGBT snubber calculation and design, on its own board
- Custom IGBT driver and isolated pulse current sensor
- Isolated module to program the charging supply
- Control board with USB, Bluetooth and touch screen
- Energy versus voltage characterization
Technical data
| IGBT | CM600HA-24A |
|---|---|
| Current sensor | ±400 A, 2500 VAC isolation |
| Charging supply | 0–4 kV, 500 J/s |
| Capacitor bank | 120 µF |
| Year | 2017–2023 |