Announcing the new video on the design, implementation and testing of the power supply module of the Theremin.
You can find the video at this link.
Also, refer to the link on the right column about the Theremin project to find all the files so far published on the construction of this unusual electronic musical instrument (schematics, 3D designs, work art).
And, finally, don’t forget to look also at the other videos on my YouTube channel.
An electronic load to test DC power supply devices up to 100W.
What do you use when you have to test a new power supply that you just built, or one that you bought and want to know if the declared specs are true?
One thing you’ll need is a passive load that you attach to the power supply output to drain a certain amount of current, both to verify that the power supply is capable of providing that amount of current, and to verify the amount of ripple that was not filtered away by the power supply itself.
A classic method for doing so is to use a rheostat, which is essentially a potentiometer capable of dissipating the amount of power produced by the power supply. The resistance of the rheostat can be changed and therefore different amount of currents can be used to test the power supply. However, rheostats are big, heavy and cumbersome.
An alternative to rheostats is to have a so-called Electronic Load. These are electronic circuits that are capable to emulate the functionality of a rheostat.
I’m proposing here two simple versions of an Electronic Load, functioning in DC, and capable of dissipating up to 100W, all of this in a very condensed space, and very light in weight.
The first version is a very simplistic one.
It uses a cascade of three transistors, in a configuration called Darlington. This configuration is effectively equivalent to a single transistor with a gain (hfe) that is the product of the gain of all the transistors in the configuration. This allows for a very little control current flowing into the potentiometer used to regulate the base current, and for a high current available between the collector and the emitter of the transistor Q3, in the above schematics.
This circuit does not need its own power supply, since it gets what it needs directly from the power supply under test. The resistor R1 is calculated based on the highest voltage that the circuit will be able to handle, in this case 50V. It is important to note, however, that using this load at lower voltages will prevent the possibility to use the full excursion of the potentiometer, thus limiting the sensitivity of the circuit for the control of the current.
The next circuit eliminates the sensitivity problem by providing it own power supply to control the base current of the Darlington, thus eliminating the dependency from the external power supply voltage.
In fact, in this case, the base current can be adjusted with the potentiometer RV1, which is polarized through the resistor R1 and the trimpot TR1, which can be adjusted to maximize the useful range of motion of the potentiometer, regardless of the voltage applied at the input terminals. This way the electronic load can have the same sensitivity for any input voltage. A digital Volt/Am-meter, powered by the same internal battery, provides a visualization of the voltage of the system under test and the current being drained from it.
I will soon publish a video on my YouTube channel that shows the Electronic Load I built for myself. Please watch for that video to come out. And, in the mean time, can you think which one of the above schematics I used? Did I use the simple one, because less expensive? O did I sacrifice a few extra bucks to gain more sensitivity on the regulation of the load?
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Happy Experiments!
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