19 Oct
2007
19 Oct
'07
9:18 a.m.
On 19 Oct 2007 at 11:22, Roger Holmes wrote:
No, when I've talked to people (in the UK) about a
rotary converter,
they were talking about a large 3 phase motor wired up with big
capacitors so that it could be started on a single phase supply and
once turning, the other two windings would provide the other two
phases whilst the pulses to the first winding would keep it running
at the right speed. Of course for a 10kVA supply, I would have needed
at least a 30kVA motor as only one phase was actually driving it.
There is the class of the commutating synchronous rectifier (for want
of a better made-up term). See
http://www.nycsubway.org/tech/power/rotary.html
To be honest, I suspect that a gizmo of this vintage is simply too
much of an antique to have been used to power any mainframe systems.
The term for the ildling 3-phase motor driven from a single-phase
source via one or more large capacitors used here in the US is
usually "Phase Converter" or "Rotary phase converter" or "Dynamic
phase converter" to differentiate itself from a simple capacitor bank
feeding a 3-phase motor, sometimes called a "static phase converter".
There is a trade name for the former, Rotocon, and occasionally
you'll see their reference to their products as "rotary converters",
but that's not general usage.
Regardless, I don't know if I'd try powering a three-phase computer
power supply from one.
Cheers,
Chuck