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Showing posts from February, 2009

13.8 Volt 20 A Power Supply

This PSU has been especially designed for current-hungry ham radio transceivers. It delivers safely around 20Amps at 13.8V. For lower currents, a separate current limiting output, capable of 15ma up to a total of 20A has been added. The power transformer should be capable to deliver at least 25A at 17.5 to 20V. The lower the voltage, the lower power dissipation. The rectified current will be “ironed” by the C1, whose capacity should not be less than 40.000uF, (a golden rule of around 2000uF/A), but we recommend 50.000uF. This capacity can be built up by several smaller capacitors in parallel. The base of this design is a simple 12V regulator (7812). The output voltage can be brought to desired value (here 13.8V) by two external resistors (R5 and R6) using this formula: U= 12(1+R5/R6) The low currents (here 15mA) will keep the 7812 in its regular function. As soon as the current rises over 15ma, the voltage drop on R4 will “open” the Q3, actually handling the high output current. Thi