30V @ 10 ampere power Supply.

Current limit not working?

Hi All,

I've been a long time viewer, but finally decided to actually get my hands dirty and build something, which as per Dave's advice, I thought
best to start with a bench PSU.

I just built this up:

http://electronics-diy.com/30v-10a-variable-bench-power-supply.php

My voltage control is working perfectly, however the current control I'm not so sure about.

I have Dave's words ringing in my head "... I hope you build it and it doesn't bloody work!"

So I powered it up with voltage and current limits set to minimum, and voltage adjustment works fine, first time, which I was pretty happy
about. It goes down to about 2.7V and up to about 14V which sounds about right as I have a 16V supply.

Next, I made sure my current limit was at minimum and then connected a 1ohm 5W resistor on the output as my load. I was measuring the
voltage, expecting to see it drop as current limit kicked in, but nothing happened except for the resistor getting HOT!

I switched out to measure the current going through the resistor and sure enough it was about 2.7A. I checked and double-checked that
everything was plugged in right and it looks good, so went to bed in disgust.

Woke up this morning with a thought that due to my minimum voltage being 2.7V, the current limit is not going to be able to lower it any
more than that, so it probably was "working", just not how I assumed it would. With this in mind, I fired it up and bumped the voltage up to
12V and applied the same 1ohm 5W resistor. This time I saw the voltage drop down to 2.7V, confirming that the circuit is working, you
beauty!

My questions are:
- how do I know what the range of my current limit will be based on the values in the circuit? Is it just the 500R pot that determines this or
does R7 and R8 come in to play as well?
- I get the feeling that this is going to be really coarse current limiting in the range of 2.7-10amps, which makes it useless for a lab power
supply does it not? 2.7A running through a microcontroller project is still going to kill it I would assume?
- Do I need a powersupply that will regulate down to 0V for a current limit that will actually protect my circuitry in the event of shorts?

Anyone have a good precision powersupply project they can recommend? I liked the idea of a 10A one as I am also in to RC Helis, so need a
fairly beefy supply for charging batteries, however maybe I can't expect to get the best of both worlds, ie. high current but with precise
control?

Cheers,
Bob.

TerminalJack505

Since you already have most of the parts, what you might do is ditch the LM723 and provide the same
functionality that it does with discrete parts. If you look at the "equivalent circuit" diagram in the datasheet then
 30V @ 10 ampere power Supply.

you'll realize that all the part does is package-up a voltage reference, error amplifier, series-pass transistor, and
current limit capability (via an NPN transistor.)

By using discrete parts you can get down to (or near) 0V on the output and you can get much better current
limiting.

The reason the LM723 can't get down below ~2V is due to the fact that the error amplifier's output can't swing
down to ground. A modern rail-to-rail op amp can help in this regard, although you still might want to have a
-1V to -2V rail to truly get to 0V on the output.

The way that your posted circuit implements current limiting is not nearly good enough for a lab power supply.
All that it is doing is sensing the voltage across the parallel resistors R5 and R6 via the 500R pot (R11.) When
the sensed voltage is large enough (~0V65) to turn on the internal NPN transistor then it will pull down on the
series-pass transistor's base, decreasing the output voltage.

If you do the math (I = 0V65 / 0R235) then you'll notice that the minimum current that you can "program" is
~2.75A. It is actually just a coincidence that the minimum settable current has the same value as the minimum
settable voltage.

So far as implementing better current limit functionality, you'll probably want to use a high-side current sense
IC (something like an INA169 INA193) and feed its output into the non-inverting input of an op amp that has
the inverting input "program" the maximum current. The output of the op amp would then be fed to an NPN
transistor whose collector is connected to the series-pass transistor's base.
Last Edit: March 09, 2015, 02:17:13 PM by TerminalJack505