Higher Amperage on standard ssroz's?

[thedudedrummer]

Hi, I am going to be buying 32 ssroz's (2.5e) from Wjohn and I was wondering if there was any way these could be modified to run/dim higher wattage lights. I am trying to run some 85w spots off of these, and I dont want to overload the circuits.
Thanks, Mike

[aussiephil]

Hi, I am going to be buying 32 ssroz's (2.5e) from Wjohn and I was wondering if there was any way these could be modified to run/dim higher wattage lights. I am trying to run some 85w spots off of these, and I dont want to overload the circuits.
Thanks, Mike

Mike

You have not mentioned what voltage the lights are, very important.

85w at 12v = 7.08A
85w at 24v = 3.54A
85w at 115v = 0.74A
85w at 240v = .36A

1A is well withing normal specs for the SSR's from my understanding even without heatsinks.

cheers
AussiePhil

[WWNF911]

FYI

some info on SSR limits.
http://www.doityourselfchristmas.com/forums/showthread.php?t=868&highlight=current+limit+SSR%2A


If you're just gonna be turning on and off one no problem. (I got the same as Phil.) Any more and you need to make sure that the current draw doesn't exceed to circuitry limitations.

More info - http://ebtx.com/mech/ampvolt.htm
In this case, Amps = Watts/volts

[thedudedrummer]

Thanks, I forgot that people on here use all the inbetween voltages, besides just the standard 120vAC and 12vDC. I will be using these with 120vAC. I was hoping to have 2 for each channel, but I have spare channels, so I can do one per bulb. I am using these to wash the front of the house (4 sets of red/green/blue/white bulbs). I would go the LED route but It would take alot of them to put out enough light. So dimming wont be a problem with these? As in the load on the triac? Also, I will be trying to run several sets of 4 way solenoids off of 12vDC. What would be the recommended 12vDC Board for this application?
Thanks, Mike

[wjohn]

The SSR boards are designed for a total of 4 amps and any single channel of up to 2 amps. Above 1 amp, heatsniks are recommended. so any ON combination is OK; e.g.

2, 2, 0, 0 or

1, 1, 1, 1 or

2, 1, 1, 0 or......


2, 1, 1, 1 (just :-), the fuse specified is 5 amps) (yes that is over 4 amps, but you are going to do it anyway!)

[DynamoBen]

For halloween I'm going to need to run 7 amps per circuit...I guess the "standard" SSR boards won't cut it then. :eek:

[wjohn]

For halloween I'm going to need to run 7 amps per circuit...I guess the "standard" SSR boards won't cut it then. :eek:


umm, yup... 7 amps x how many channels?. Have a look at the 'Hockey Puck' style SSRs. Ronp had a box full of them and he may still have a few more to sell. Otherwise, check eBay.

John.

[WWNF911]

So dimming wont be a problem with these?

Dude, looks like either the question was buried or just no response. I don't know the answer so will defer to anyone with experience. Anyone ever tried dimming these conventional style floods?

[wjohn]

I have run 150 PAR38 Floods on a standard SSR (in fact 2 150W PAR38 floods @ 240VAC) per channel, without issues.

Running 85 watts at 110VAC wont be an issue, only 3/4 Amp per channel, even two floods would be OK.

[Macrosill]

I have dimmed 85 watt PAR38 bulbs without issue all last Halloween. Used the red ones for the graveyard.

[TERBObob]

Why couldn't he simply change out the triac ( to a higher amp one ) and strengthen the run with , maybe some copper wire ? ( on the SSR )

[thedudedrummer]

Thanks for the info on dimming. I knew the bulb would dim on a normal dimmer (wall style), but I didnt know if it would be hard on the triac at all. So it sounds like I can run atleast one, maybe 2 floods per channel if I used a heatsink. But would there be an issue if I just wanted to swap the triac out for a higher amperage unit? or would this affect a majority of other components on the board?

[Wayne J]

Thanks for the info on dimming. I knew the bulb would dim on a normal dimmer (wall style), but I didnt know if it would be hard on the triac at all. So it sounds like I can run atleast one, maybe 2 floods per channel if I used a heatsink. But would there be an issue if I just wanted to swap the triac out for a higher amperage unit? or would this affect a majority of other components on the board?

The triac isn't your issue, it's the traces on the pcb. ;)

[DynamoBen]

The triac isn't your issue, it's the traces on the pcb. ;)

On a more serious note we may want to consider beefing the traces up; put them more into the 8 amp per circuit range.

[Wayne J]

On a more serious note we may want to consider beefing the traces up; put them more into the 8 amp per circuit range.

I am currently drawing high amp pcb's. I have some higher amp lights I will want to run next year. Maybe a small coop for them would be good.

[P. Short]

I'm not sure if you are talking about 8A total or 8A per channel. If it's 8A/channel then some attention needs to be paid to proper heatsink design/selection, because 8A per channel equates to about 8W per triac.

[DynamoBen]

I was talking per channel.

[Wayne J]

Per channels, but my design is to be more for 5A per channel.

[Rocketman4]

Grainers sells SSR upto 50 amps single pole. They have different coil or switching voltages(mine is 110v). 07 Christmas I bought the 6 channel light show rated for 2 amps per channel. I took the male christmas lite plug attached it to the coil side for switching purposes. Then a lamp cord I cut the hot side only and hooked it to the Line, and load side of the ssr. This gave me a seperate input voltage and amperage to control an excessive load of lights. Its like double SSR's.

[wjohn]

8 amps a channel. I would still use the 'Hockey Puck'. A PCB board for more than a couple of amps is risky, then there is the heat dissapation issue.

If you can find a stud style TRIAC (insulated), I would consider that as a second option, and just use the SSR board for the interface and isolation. Mount the Stud TRIACs on an appropriate heatsink and insulate the power electronics.

[Macrosill]

We need to stop and think here for a moment. High amperage relays can be useful, without a doubt. But lets think about all the other things that need to go along with them. You want 8 amp/channel relays. Well a standard 4 channel configuration will need circuit protection of 24 amps. That would require a 30 amp line from your electric panel utilizing 10 awg cabling. Now add the GFCI protection required for outdoor use and you have yourself a 50.00 or more circuit breaker. Add in the 100.00 or more of 10 awg extension cords, 40.00 for the 30 amp receptacle, then the box and adapters to get this much power to the relays and you have come up with a significant cost. More than 200.00 for 4 channels, thats over 50.00 per channel. That is the most expensive set up I have ever heard of. It would be cheaper to but 8 times that amount of channels of LOR. You will save money by using more conventional sized relays with more channels. With 16 channels on this system you could realistically draw almost 100 amps of current.

One high amperage channel here and there is a logical way to go and in that case a better fit would be simple hockey puck style relays.

Even 5 amps/channel is a lot. You need to feed a single dedicated 20 amp circuit for every 4 channels. With the price of copper going nowhere but up these dedicated circuits are going to get expensive. Just think what it would cost to send a dedicated 20 amp circuit to every 4 channel relay box in the yard. Or in the case of a Ren16 you would need 4 dedicated circuits to a single board, if it could handle that kind of current. 80 amps of power to a 16 channel board.

Lets step back and think about this. Although a nice concept its not very realistic except for some very limited uses.

[DynamoBen]

As most know I come from the opposite end of the lighting world where 20 amps per circuit is the smallest you go. At 20 amps you would normally see the hockey puck style (or custom) SCR like wjohn mentioned.

However between what we do here and what I used to do is what I call the DJ market. The DJ market is filled with dimmer packs capable of running at 8 amps per circuit. A typical 4 channel pack will run off of one 15A edison cable. These packs, and I own 4, have 8 amp SCRs on circuit boards not unlike the ones we use here. There is a heat sink but its not as substantial as you might think. These circuit boards seem to happily carry an 8 amp load.

In the end I'm not sure what the hesitation is here. If the only limitation is trace width then there is no harm in increasing it. Everyone is still able to run at 2A but folks like myself who have higher current needs then have the option to move up to 8 amps. BTW it would be a rare case that I would load all 4 circuits to 8 amps at the same time, however more often then not 2A won't cover my needs.

BTW I attached a photo of one of the two SCR boards in the DJ style dimmer packs I have.

[P. Short]

Are those truly SCR-based, or is that just the conventional terminology? Since SCRs are unidirectional, I would expect to see eight of them in a four-pack.

[TERBObob]

Still don't understand WHY , he can't use a higher amped triac with a good heatsink/heatsink compound , and strengthen the run/trace to accomodate the higher current ?
Even if he was to mount the opto, resistors and triac on a breadboard , rather than the COOP's PCB .
With the hockey puck , he won't get dimming . :(

[P. Short]

Still don't understand WHY , he can't use a higher amped triac with a good heatsink/heatsink compound , and strengthen the run/trace to accomodate the higher current ?
Even if he was to mount the opto, resistors and triac on a breadboard , rather than the COOP's PCB .
With the hockey puck , he won't get dimming . :(

Who is 'he', and who said that 'he' couldn't?

[TERBObob]

"He" is thedudedrummer , and its not that it was said that "he" couldn't , but , I made the statement earlier in the post , and thought that that would be the answer , but , seems that everyone had other ideas/advice . ( mainly about hockey puck style SSR's which would not allow for dimming )

[P. Short]

It seems that things went off-topic.

As far as I can tell, thedudedrummer can get by with one 85W PAR38 (??) bulb per channel. If this is the case, the standard SSRs would work fine for him, without need for any change. Since he seems to be a newby, I'd leave it at that. While it would should be OK to run two bulbs per channel (marginal for triac temp and marginal for PCB track temperature), I'm not going to advise that he does that.

The rest of the discussion was about significantly higher current levels, and isn't really relevant to his situation.

[Macrosill]

"He" is thedudedrummer , and its not that it was said that "he" couldn't , but , I made the statement earlier in the post , and thought that that would be the answer , but , seems that everyone had other ideas/advice . ( mainly about hockey puck style SSR's which would not allow for dimming )

If the OP only needs to run 2 85 watt bulbs on a channel it falls under the 2 amp recommendation with heat sinks.

FYI, If you get the proper hockey puck style ssr they can dim just fine. So if only needs a few channels to run higher amperage than the current "coop style" ssr can handle he can use a hockey puck and dim with it.

If someone wants to run the "coop style" ssrs at a higher amperage than what the people who designed recommends then do so. We have had lots of input on the design we have. We have also come up with the recommendations we give based on that input and personal testing we have done.

If he or anyone else needs a "coop style" ssr with higher amperage ratings they can design them.

[Virtus]

...he can use a hockey puck and dim with it.

I have a question about this. Would the "dimmed" normal SSR output (120V) become the "control" on the puck and therefore transfer the dimming timing to the puck?

[Macrosill]

No, the puck ssr takes the place of the coop ssr. You can use 4 pucks or use 3 channels on the coop ssr and one puck, so on and so forth.

[Virtus]

Gotcha', thanks for the details.

[vziukas]

What if to use relay : RT424615
http://www.mouser.com/Search/ProductDetail.aspx?qs=souyeP66LNEWDvmL0hcjYQ%3d%3d
Its 8Amp and not big size to fit to same enclosure with SSROZ ?
What you think guys ?

[fkostyun]

There is one easy way to do this with the SSR Co-Op boards:

If you install a jumper from pins 1 to pin 3 on the in place of the triac, you can then use a triac such as BTA40-600B.

http://rocky.digikey.com/weblib/ST%20Micro/Web%20Photos/New%20Photos/RD91.jpg

If I had a SSR OZ I would draw it up a little better. But, you can easily mount this triac to a large heatsink.