Regulated Power Supply 20A by TIP3055
February 8th, 2010Advertisements
A heavy duty 13.8V regulated power supply is a fine thing to have in the shack, but unless you acquire one secondhand, is an expensive little beastie to buy. This means building one should be considered, not only for the cost savings, but also because you can brag about it on air to your mates. Of course, careful consideration must be given to the properties of the completed supply, and after talking to a few of my friends who have built their own and fallen into all the traps, here are the printable ones : RF proof, easy to make, commonly available parts used, but above
The details published provide a transformer and rectifier structure capable of providing 8 amps DC continuously (and short current peaks up to 20 amps). This is sufficient to adequately power SSB transceivers with 100W PEP outputs, BUT WILL NOT power a transceiver providing a continuous carrier of greater than about 40 watts.e.g. AM, FM, continuous key down morse, single tone SSB testing etc. Demanding a continuous output of more than 8 amps will result in thetransformer secondary overheating, with a possible fire risk. The reason we can get away with a supply with an 8 amp continuous rating is simply that speech is very “peaky” data, and so SSB has the odd high power peak but a very low average power level (usually about 20 -30% of peak value). It is on this basis thattransformer and heatsink sizes are usually selected for domestic hi-fi equipment.
Source: http://www.users.on.net/%7Eendsodds/ps20.htm
