About:
Soft Clamping Technology
Fully Protect Against Unclean Power
PSYTRONICS has worked for more than 25 years to perfect a soft clamping technology that fully protects against the problems caused by unclean power. Unlike metal oxide varistors (MOVs), soft clamping technology absorbs and dissipates the destructive energy of unclean power. The hard clamping characteristic of a MOV is responsible for the introduction of undesirable current transients in the system. In fact, it is these same current transients that cause a MOV to degrade over time. Soft clamping dampens and smooth the disturbance without introducing troublesome current transients and soft clamping technology does not degrade over time. The clamping action of a MOV is, by design, a rapid change from a non-conducting state to a conducting state.
This, together with its limited energy dissipation capability, requires that the clamping action threshold be quite high to prevent itself from being destroyed by longer duration surges and overvoltages. Soft clamping technology uses a much lower action threshold and smoothly begins absorbing the energy from a transient so that it may never even reach the action threshold of a MOV! (Use PSYTRONICS soft clamping technology to protect the MOVs embedded in your power supplies from degradation and failure.)
PSYTRONIC’s soft clamping technology is to traditional MOVs what a dimmer switch is to a traditional light switch. “Dimming” (soft clamping) signal disturbances avoids many undesirable side-effects and results in cleaner power.
How Soft Clamping Handles Transients
Unlike isolation and/or shielded transformers, soft clamping technology does not block or reflect transients
Whether a transient comes from an external source or is produced internally, soft clamping technology absorbs and dissipates the energy it contains. Isolation transformers work to block transients, keeping external transients from entering, but also trapping internal transients inside! As a result, equipment is not protected from internally generated transients and externally generated transients are reflected back to the system and remain capable of damaging other equipment. Unlike transformers, soft clamping technology is installed in parallel with the load. Since transformers are installed in series with the load they must be sized to handle the flow of the entire current required by the load. In addition, they introduce heat producing losses. None of the load current flows through soft clamping technology. (Use PSYTRONICS soft clamping technology instead of an isolation transformers to economically control both internal and external transients.)