A little note, Thanks to a kind fellow sharing this repair info with me, related to the A7A3 assy of the 8662/8663A generators: the 9100-4018 base drive transformer. There are two of these on the 08862-60289 board, protected by a fuse and diodes, nothing should acutally happen to them, but things can go wrong.
Below, the two versions of the A7A3 boards, left, the older 08662-60289, and the more recent 08662-60604. This post only refers to the -60289, the base drive transformers of the newer units look the same, but have part number 9100-5291 – don’t know if the can be exchanged.
A snipet of the power supply circuit, there are two identical base drive transformers, center tapped on one side.
Cross reference – this is a NSN part, the most prominent manufacturer seems to have been Fil-Mag, which use to be a Sprague company long ago.
Note that these little beasts come at a quite hefty price! That’s well over USD 100, just for the two base drive transformers – I hope, HP did not pay the list price, or anywhere close to it.
Here is a rare view of the interals, after heavy work with sandpaper and other means (these transformers are potted, but as with all potting compounds it can be removed, if you have plenty of time, a good supply of tools and don’t mind the dust and dirt).
It uses an OJ41408 bobin/pot core, PC14/8 size. Wire is about 0.1 mm size. The pot cores are still available from Magnetics Corporation, mag-inc.com, and the material is just a regular mid-frequency ferrite. So you might be lucky with just using any average good pot core with about 5000 permittivity (e.g., N30 ferrite).
Fingers crossed that you will never need this information, because it is quite a laborious effort to reverse-engineer the internals, and to fabricate a new transformer manually. Tempted to say, I could manufactur them well below list price, if someone would need a 1000 pieces….
Here at the NRAO, we (I) love my 8663’s and I do whatever I can to keep them going. I have access to about 7 of them, 3 of which work! I’ve done a great deal of repair on power supplies but that transformer just about ended it for me – until I found a supplier and bought 15 of them! (of which 14 I will probably never use!) So, if you need one for educational purposes, I could probably convince my boss that a ~$15 “donation” for some press wouldn’t cause too much concern.
Jim, that’s great. I would open it up and try count the windings. The 8663a are marvelous, I have fixed a few but only one here in the shop!
This is Michael Irwin with Nevada RF Services. I have repaired a few of these dead power supplies, some with all 4 boards with problems. If you are not sure of the UH of the transformers you are referring to on the A7A3 board, what I used was my handy meter to measure the uH or mH of each segment of the transformers. If they appear the same or close, it is a safe bet they could be usable. I have not yet seen those bad, but have seen several times the fuses F1 and F2 blown, as well as the power transistors. Also, the diodes on the A7A2 seemed leaky, and I replaced them with the diode from the parts list which was NOT leaky. There is about 10 of this type. I also built an extender cable, and test load box, plus have all the extender cards.