What Is the Maximum Output Voltage of a Custom Voltage Multiplier Circuit?

[lockedup]

Homework Statement

You have two 120VAC:24VAC transformers, 16 high voltage capacitors and 10 high voltage diodes. Design, on paper, a circuit that maximizes output voltage. What is the maximum voltage of your circuit?

Homework Equations

The Attempt at a Solution

So my textbook has literally five sentences on voltage multipliers (I counted) and it expects me to know enough to design one using these components. I have no idea what to do. My professor made an offhand remark that I didn't have to use all the components so I wrote down something like this:

where n=10 and I put a transformer between the signal the rest of the circuit. So I'm guessing the max voltage would be 24(10)-.6(10) = 234 V

I don't even know what you would do with two transformers. Is there some way to connect them in series or parallel? Any voltage multiplier I've seen has an equal number of capacitors and diodes so I don't know why I'm given 16 and 10.

 

[rude man]

Fake out your professor by putting the 24V windings in parallel and the two 115V windings in series, then plugging in the 24V windings into 115V. That would give you what ac voltage with which to excite your voltage multiplier?

Voltage multipliers (if unloaded) produce a pure dc voltage everywhere within the circuit, so is putting a transformer within the multiplier circuit a good idea?

As for the circuit itself: look up "cascade voltage multiplier" on the Web or wherever. Your particular circuit is not easy to analyze without simulation software so I can't tell what your circuit would do. Might be the cat's pajamas ...

 

[gneill]

Fake out your professor by putting the 24V windings in parallel and the two 115V windings in series, then plugging in the 24V windings into 115V. That would give you what ac voltage with which to excite your voltage multiplier?

There may be another arrangement of the transformers that'll give you a bigger boost

 

[rude man]

Good thinking, gneill. Yes there is. I came up with 1200V - did you get 3000?

 

[gneill]

Good thinking, gneill. Yes there is. I came up with 1200V - did you get 3000?

Yup. Not a bad place from which to kick off the voltage multiplying