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WREC reforms electrolytic capacitors by controlling SCPI programmable power supplies, such as the Agilent E3631A

License: GPL (GNU General Public License)
File size: 14K
Developer: Eric Smith
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WREC reforms electrolytic capacitors by controlling SCPI programmable power supplies, such as the Agilent E3631A. Currently only serial control (IEEE-1174) at 9600 bps is supported.

The command line syntax is:

wrec < serialport >

WREC will ramp the voltage, at each step setting an appropriate current limit, and waiting for the leakage current to drop to an acceptable level.

Initially, only the Agilent E3631A triple-output power supply is supported, because that's the only one I have. The E3631A has three power supplies:

max voltage max current
6.0V 5.0A
+25.0V 1.0A
-25.0V 1.0A

The +/-25V supplies share a common ground. In principle WREC can use this power supply to reform three capacitors simultaneously. However, since most of the capacitors to be reformed have rated voltages of 20V or 25V, I normally expect to only reform two at a time.

WREC should work with only very minor modifications with other SCPI-programmable power supplies with serial interfaces. I haven't yet looked into making it control IEEE-488 (GPIB, HPIB) SCPI power supplies, but that shouldn't be too difficult either.

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