Planar transformers

[Tim Williams]

Use 'em much? How does your experience compare with regular components,
in regards to anything that might've caught your attention: performance,
area, effective cost, etc.

Any opinions on design tools for them? I'm guessing most EDA packages
don't have this, though many will support the structures (e.g., Altium
lets me declare a net bridge and put whatever funky copper I want between
pads, which would work well for printed RF components as well).

Anyone tried building them in two-sided PCBs? It occurs to me, to get any
isolation clearance, the layout must extend pretty far beyond the core,
which is going to do interesting things to leakage and EMI.

Tim

 

[Allan Herriman]

Use 'em much? How does your experience compare with regular components,
in regards to anything that might've caught your attention: performance,
area, effective cost, etc.

Any opinions on design tools for them? I'm guessing most EDA packages
don't have this, though many will support the structures (e.g., Altium
lets me declare a net bridge and put whatever funky copper I want
between pads, which would work well for printed RF components as well).

Anyone tried building them in two-sided PCBs? It occurs to me, to get
any isolation clearance, the layout must extend pretty far beyond the
core, which is going to do interesting things to leakage and EMI.

I've not used them in my own designs, but I've used plenty of DC/DC
converter modules that do, and they all have multi-layer PCBs. Power is
in the range 50-200W, PCB thickness is usually 2-3mm (to fill the core),
and the layer count is often 10 or more. There are no tracks on outer
layers in the vicinity of the core.

I don't think two sided will cut it, because of leakage inductance and
clearance. YMMV.

Regards,
Allan

 

[P E Schoen]

"Tim Williams" wrote in message

Use 'em much? How does your experience compare with regular
components, in regards to anything that might've caught your
attention: performance, area, effective cost, etc.

I've never used them, but I can recommend a company in NJ that does a good
job at reasonable cost for EI core transformers, and they seem to have
expertise in planar designs. Talk to Simon and tell him I sent you

http://www.magnumtransformer.com/planar.html

Paul