AVAB PDD III 14kW Light Dimmer Teardown

The AVAB PDD III light dimmer system is built for 96 channels of 10A capacity per channel. A full stocked rack would be able of pulling a total of 960A at 230VAC, pulling over 200kW, just for lights in a theater! This system dates back to 1997, and even earlier with its version 2 and 1 taken into account. AVAB has a lot of great images of their old and vintage equipment on their Facebook page.

For more teardown articles, images and videos, check out the complete list of power electronics teardowns!

Inside the AVAB PDD III Light Dimmer

The AVAB PDD III dimmer module consists of a 325-531 Card Local Link III, which is the control board of the module. Two driver / filter boards are marked 300-369 Card PDD III Filter Rev. C, this board is the driver between the controller and the TRIAC

It uses a Philips 80C31BH-316WP 8-bit microcontroller, running at 16 MHz. There is 6 channels per dimmer module, each channel is controlled by a single ST BT40-700B TRIAC, in the RD91 package. The Sharp S21ME3 TRIAC driver is a phototriac coupler for isolation between controller and TRIAC.

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