Since I’ve discovered some nice high power PSUs in the form of Playstation 3 PSUs, it’s time to get a new Bench PSU Build underway! I’ve gone for the APS-227 version as it’s got the 32A rail. This makes things slightly beefier overall, as the loading will never be anywhere
I was recently given a Sony PS3 with a dead disc drive, and since I’m not a console gamer I figured I’d see if there were any handy parts inside. Turns out these units contain a rather nice SMPS, the Sony APS-231 with a high power 12v rail, rated at
I was recently given a pretty nice LED backlit 1080p LG monitor, with the instruction that it wouldn’t power on correctly. The monitor would power on as far as the standby light, but when fully powered on, would flash the backlight momentarily then shut down. A power supply issue was
To do some upgrades to my NAS, I needed some SATA power adaptors, to split the PSU out to the planned 16 disk drives. eBay has these for very little money, however there’s a good reason for them being cheap. The marking on the wire tells me it’s 18AWG, which
Here’s a cheap PSU from the treasure trove of junk that is eBay, rated at a rather beefy 400W of output at 12v – 33A! These industrial-type PSUs from name brands like TDK-Lambda or Puls are usually rather expensive, so I was interested to find out how much of a
Continue readingeBay Chinese Chassis Power Supply S-400-12 400W 12v 33A
I have found myself needing some more in the way of High Voltage supplies of late, with the acquisition of the new He-Ne laser tubes, so I went trawling eBay for something that would be suitable to run these tubes. (I currently only have a single He-Ne laser PSU brick,
Looking through eBay recently I came across a great deal on some Helium-Neon laser heads from Melles Griot. While definitely not new, these gas lasers are extremely long-lasting & I figured the tubes inside would make a nice addition to my laser collection. Doing some searching on the model number,
Continue readingMelles-Griot 05-LHP-141-15 Helium Neon Laser Head & Tube Extraction
For a long time I’ve needed a decent vacuum desoldering tool, as I do much stripping of old PCBs for random parts. Solder wick works well for most things, but it’s expensive & can be fiddly. It also doesn’t keep very long as the copper braid oxidises & after that
Continue readingDuratool ZD-915 Vacuum Desoldering Station Teardown
On the quest to get things on board replaced that are heavy users of power, the monitor in the main cabin was next. The original CCFL-backlit monitor was very heavy on 12v power, at 5A. This meant falling asleep watching TV would result in severely flattened batteries. Replacement with a
Continue readingViewSonic VA2232W-LED Monitor 12v Conversion
Now the controllers have arrived, I can rejig the supplies to have proper thermal control on their cooling. Here’s the top off the PSU. The board has been added to the back panel, getting it’s 12v supply from the cable that originally fed the fan directly. Luckily there was just
So, here is where all the action happens. Main radio of course is housed on the left, it’s partially hidden under my currently over-populated breadboard. All 3 monitors are linked to the same PC, using a pair of video cards. This is a very flexible system with so much screen
The power supplies I have recently built from surplus Cisco switch boards have started displaying a rather irritating problem – continual load of over 9A causes the supplies to shut down on overheat. This was partially expected, as the original switches that these supplies came from are cooled by a
My other monitors are a different model, and have a slightly different main PCB inside, but the process is mostly the same for converting these to 12v supply. In this monitor type, there is only a single board, with all the PSU & logic, instead of separate boards for each
As the crimp tool for the PSU connector in the Rigol scope is a very expensive piece of hardware, I decided to use pre-crimped terminals, from an ATX power connector. (They’re the same type). Here’s the partially completed loom, with the 13 cores for the power rails. The 14th pin
Since everything in my shack is run from 12v, I thought it would be handy to convert my new scope to 12v as well, as 99% of the places I find myself needing test gear are off grid, with no access to mains supplies. Here’s the factory mains SMPS unit
I recently ordered a PSU to run one of the TVs I converted to 12v operation, and being an older TV, it’s a fairly heavy load at 6.5A. eBay to the rescue again, with a cheap 10A rated supply. Like all similar supplies these days, it’s a SMPS unit, and
Here’s the final instalment of the new high gain TV antenna & it’s masthead amplifier. Here’s the new antenna on it’s removable mast. This apparently will give 13db of gain over the old antenna. The masthead amplifier box is mounted just below. Here’s the amplifier just below the antenna. I
A while ago I blogged about modifying the output voltage of some surplus Cisco switch power supplies to operate at 13.8v. Since I was able to score a nice Hammond 1598DSGYPBK ABS project box on eBay, I’ve built one of the supplies into a nice bench unit. Above is the
Recently I decommissioned some networking equipment, and discovered the power supplies in some switches were single rail 12v types, with a rather high power rating. I figured these would be very good for powering my Ham radio gear. They’re high quality Delta Electronics DPSN-150BP units, rated at a maximum power
Continue readingCisco PSU Hack & Switched Mode PSU Background
After watching a video over at Scullcom Hobby Electronics on YouTube, I figured I’d build one of these precision references to calibrate my multimeters. It’s based around a REF102P 10v precision reference & an INA105P precision unity gain differential amplifier. For full information, check out the video, I won’t go
This is a late 90’s business timeclock, used for maintaining records of staff working times, by printing the time when used on a sheet of card. Here is the top cover removed, which is normally locked in place to stop tampering. The unit is programmed with the 3 buttons &
This is the teardown of a Zebra P330i plastic card printer, used for creating ID cards, membership cards, employee cards, etc. I got this as a faulty unit, which I will detail later on. This printer supports printing on plastic cards from 1-30mils thick, using dye sublimation & thermal transfer
Here are the viewfinder electronics from a 1984 Hitachi VHS Movie VM-1200E Camcorder. These small CRT based displays accept composite video as input, plus 5-12v DC for power. Here is the front face of the CRT, diameter is 0.5″. Closeup view of the PCB, there are several adjustments & a
This is an old CO alarm, which was totally dead, having been connected to the wrong PSU. Here is the front of the unit, with the Test button & indicator LEDs. Front of the PCB, 3 1.5v cells powered the unit, Piezo sounder & sensor cell in the centre of
Connection The parts arrived for my adjustable laser diode driver! Components here are an LM317K with heatsink, 100Ω 10-turn precision potentiometer, 15-turn counting dial & a 7-pin matching plug & socket. Here is the schematic for the driver circuit. I have used a 7-pin socket for provisions for active cooling