Inverter overhaul

Today I did most of the overhaul of my motor drive. I got a surplus enclosure and am repackaging all of the guts of the drive to be more compact and more weather resistant. Here is the power stage in the new enclosure, with a pen for scale:



I made a crimp tool from a pair of bolt cutters for crimping the lugs onto the 4 gauge wire. It cost $20 rather than the $200 that crimp tools this size normally cost. Obviously, less engineering went into this one, but it seems to work fine.


Here's the drive with the gate drive circuitry in place:
and here it is with the control board in:

and here I've added the main DC link capacitor. I still need to wire it up.


and, finally, here is the buttoned-up box. The heat sink fins stick out the bottom. I will set the whole works on rubberized standoffs on top of the motor subframe. I also need to mount the cooling fans.