Bench power supply

  • Posted 9 September 2018

I have finally gotten a proper bench power supply, a Rigol DP832.

For the longest time I survived on DIY power supplies, wall warts, and more recently a DPS type power supply.
They did the job, but each one had their own issues. The wall warts were dumb so it was hard to break them, but no constant current and no idea if it was feeding proper voltage or not. The DIY power supplies always seemed not upto snuff, and they just looked ugly on my desk.
The DPS unit was the first that was very useful and had feedback, but I had issues sometimes were it would reset if there was a load spike and the output under CC was very noisy.
 

Out of luck I saw one posted on CL for a very good price and contacted the seller and the next day I had myself a good power supply.
Its 3x ouput, 30v/3a, 30v/3a, 5v, 3a. You can join Ch1 and Ch2 in series/parallel to get 60v/3a or 30v/6a.
The 3rd output of 0-5v is super handy for driving the small circuits that usually control the loads that would be feeding on Ch1/Ch2.

One of the BIGGEST issues I had with my DPS power supply is that to go from changing voltage to current, required some 4 presses of different buttons. Also tweaking voltage sometimes required pressing the buttons until you went back to the digit you wanted to adjust. With the Rigol, that big number buttons on the right quickly let you enter in any value and set it as V/mV/A/ma
The other interesting part I just learned about is that there is a function where you can program it to "ramp up" the voltage to replicate another power system, such as a wall wart or chain. I havent experience problems with starting up voltages causing major issues - I use a delay or a reset mcu to handle proper power up in those cases anyways - but it will be handy I hope to be able to simulate different situations with this Rigol.

My father always says, buy good tools! How right he is.
 

Now that Ive received replacement mosfets for the brushed rc motor controller for the Hummer project I can get back to that project. Next tool, maybe a proper desoldering station ??? (wick and solder pump on those thick ground planes is not fun)