I was helping someone with an amp build over Telegram (chat app) yesterday when this question came up. He had in fact been trying to use a diode bridge with a center tapped transformer with both the center tap and the bridge grounded. He released the magic smoke from his transformer, though there were a couple of other issues that may have contributed to this.
When I was starting out, I had some confusion with power transformers and rectifiers, too. Probably like many others, I started with small solid state circuits, where center tapped transformers are rare. Once I started building with tubes, the secondary ratings of center tap transformers were another source of confusion. So here’s a by no means complete rundown of transformer configurations.
1. My transformer doesn’t have a center tap and I want a full-wave rectified DC output.
You want to use a diode bridge (figure 4-8). This is four diodes arranged to rectify both positive and negative phases of the power transformer’s AC output. Your ground will be taken from the bridge, NOT THE TRANSFORMER. This ground at the junction of the diodes creates a return path for current that ‘switches’ with the changing phase of the secondary’s AC output.
2. My transformer has a center tap and I want a full-wave rectified DC output.
You want to use a “conventional” full-wave rectifier (figure 4-5A). This requires only two diodes (solid state or a rectifier tube). Your ground is taken from the center tap of the transformer (which is then the return path for current). Many center tapped transformers are rated as the full end-to-end secondary voltage. For example, a 300VAC center tapped secondary would actually provide 150VAC into a conventional full-wave rectifier. You’ll sometimes see the same transformer listed as 150V-0-150V.
Here’s a great clarification of what’s going on with full-wave bridges and conventional full-wave rectification.
How much voltage do I get?
With either of the above, the unloaded DC output into a capacitor-input filter is approximately the AC output from the secondary times the square root of two, minus the voltage drop across the diodes (minimal for solid-state, can be considerable for tube rectifiers). Into a choke-input filter (unloaded, ignoring diode drop), the output will be approximately two times the square root of two divided by pi (about 0.9) of the AC output of the transformer secondary.
3. My transformer secondary has a center tap, but I want a bipolar power supply.
Here you can combine the center-tapped transformer and the aforementioned bridge style rectifier. See figure 5.1c here. This creates two separate full-wave rectified voltages, one positive and the other negative with respect to the center tap. If you read a lot of TubeCAD, you see bipolar tube circuits pretty regularly.
4. My power transformer is 300VAC (150V-0-150V) center tapped, but I want 400VDC!
Another way to combine the center tapped transformer and bridge rectifier is to ignore the center tap altogether. Do not connect it to ground; just SAFELY tape it off and tuck it away. Now you have basically a non-center tapped transformer and you can treat it like number 1 above. Note that current capacity in this configuration is typically half of what the transformer was originally rated for.
5. My power transformer is 120VAC without a center tap and I want 300VDC!
To achieve this, you can use a voltage doubler (see figure 4 “Delon circuit). This requires two diodes and two capacitors. Because the capacitors will see large pulses from the diodes and will be supplying the rest of the circuit continuously, they need to be a fairly large value. But because each only sees half of the supply voltage, their voltage ratings are a little more relaxed in comparison to what is required in a filter. The unloaded DC output into a capacitor-input filter is approximately twice the AC voltage from the transformer secondary times the square root of two. Current capacity must be de-rated at the output voltage by a factor of at least two.
6. My power transformer has dual matching secondaries and no center tap. What do I do?
This is common with toroidal power transformers in particular. You can wire the two secondaries in parallel (making sure the polarities are matching) and use a bridge rectifier like number 1 above. The AC output of the transformer will be the same as either secondary by itself (and current capacity will be doubled). You can also wire the secondaries in series by connecting a positive and negative from each secondary (not the positive and negative from the same secondary!). This creates a center tap at the junction. The AC output end-to-end will be twice the AC output of a single secondary if the secondary is not grounded (see number 4 above). If you ground the secondary you created, you can use a rectifier like number 2 above.
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