Eighteen 6 kW Power Supplies Integrated in Magna-Power's First All-Black Rack

Magna-Power designs and manufactures rack enclosures for its rack-mount MagnaDC power supplies and MagnaLOAD DC electronic loads, and its in-house sheet metal, powder coating, and machining operations allow for custom integration work. Until recently, the tallest single-bay rack in the lineup was the 36U CAB-A4. Customers have asked for more room many times, so Magna-Power developed the 42U CAB-A9, which measures 79.5" H x 24" W x 31.5" D. The CAB-A9 is now a standard offering, and this system was the first one built in it.

The customer's R&D lab needed eighteen independently controlled DC outputs in a single rack, with room left over for its own test hardware. The 6 kW SLx Series model SLx6-600-10, rated for 0-600 Vdc and 0-10 Adc, met the voltage and current requirements. At 1U per power supply, all eighteen units fit in the bottom 18U of the rack, leaving the space above for the customer's equipment.

The customer also had a firm requirement for black equipment. That made this the first system to use the new +C1 option for the SLx Series, which adds a textured black powder coat and a black front panel. Magna-Power powder coated the cabinet black to match. This is the first all-black system Magna-Power has built, and the whole team was excited to see it come together.

The customer plans to install its own devices under test in the rack next to the power supplies. To keep the look consistent, Magna-Power supplied six empty 2U XR Series enclosures, also in black. The customer's hardware goes inside them, so the finished rack looks like one system instead of a mix of equipment from different suppliers.

Every power supply includes the LXI TCP/IP Ethernet option for addressable communications. Magna-Power installed an Ethernet switch in the rack and wired it to all eighteen units, so the customer only needs to run one Ethernet cable to the rack.

Magna-Power also handled the AC power distribution. Facility power connects to copper bus bars at the top of the cabinet, which feed a UL-listed ABB circuit breaker mounted at the front of the rack. From the breaker, AC power is distributed to each of the eighteen power supplies. The cabinet fans, which pull air in at the bottom and exhaust it out the top, are tied into the topmost power supply and turn on automatically.

The customer plans to operate each power supply on its own. Even so, Magna-Power took the opportunity to validate master-slave operation on 16 of the units in the rack, the most the SLx Series supports in a master-slave configuration. Set up this way, the 16 power supplies operate as a single 96 kW power supply.

The system was also a good test for MagnaCTRL, the control software that comes standard with Magna-Power's xGen products. All eighteen power supplies were added to MagnaCTRL's Product Explorer at the same time.

The 42U CAB-A9 rack enclosure and the +C1 black enclosure option for the SLx Series are both available now as standard offerings.