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FrozenGate by Avery

Line Drive™ - 15A Linear Driver for Labbies

The Lightning Stalker

The Lightning Stalker

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Joined
Aug 14, 2013
Messages
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I've been working on a driver for the newer
high current diodes. It is a less
expensive linear driver geared more towards
lab-style builds. It originally grew out
of an experimental 3.5W NDB7A75 driver for
a laser router project. The maximum
current is 15A, limited mostly by the size
of your heatsink. Some features include an
adjustment pot and soft start for driving
more sensitive diodes. The polarity is
continuous positive.

Specifications:
2.4 - 15V
1.0 - 15A
9-turn pot or single versions
TO-220 mount for super-effective heatsinking
Continuous positive

Line%20Drive%E2%84%A2%20r1.5%20Bottom.jpg
⁠ ⁠ ⁠
Line%20Drive%E2%84%A2%20r1.5%20Top.jpg


UPDATE:
The test results are in.
See the last post in this thread for details.
 
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Re: Line Drive™ - A High Current Linear Driver

Continuous positive... good for IR diodes....

Looks good!!!! I have no idea where to get LARGE labby heatsinks.... maybe you can point me to some. I would LOVE a 5 watter with no duty cycle, and this driver seems simple and effective!

Keep us updated....

:beer:
-Matt
 
Re: Line Drive™ - A High Current Linear Driver

Those are awfully tiny traces for so much amperage.
 
Re: Line Drive™ - A High Current Linear Driver

Don't forget vias. Rule of thumb is half amp per via I believe.
 
Re: Line Drive™ - A High Current Linear Driver

Ditto on the above two.

Good to see you're getting some projects out there though. Welcome to the club!
 
Re: Line Drive™ - A High Current Linear Driver

Thanks for the support, guys. You are right about
the vias and the traces being on the skinny. I left
mask off the high current traces so they could be
tinned with solder or even wires put along to help
with the current capacity if needed. Most of the
high current traces are on the other side of the
board. I'm also using the wires/pads and
component pins themselves as vias on all the high
current stuff as well. Worse comes to worse, we
could put in lots of vias and run traces on both
sides of the board.

I may also need to put in some bigger wirepads. It
occurred to me last night after the boards were
ordered that the wires we normally use probably
aren't going to cut it. We'll see how things go once
we can get a few of these assembled.
 
Re: Line Drive™ - A High Current Linear Driver

You're welcome to this:

attachment.php


attachment.php


EDIT: WTF? When did LPF stop allowing uploads of zip files ?!? I guess I'm not sharing this after all.... I am happy to upload to LPF where I can easily come back and delete if that ever becomes neccesary, but I'm not going to start registering for file upload accounts, or using free ones where you lose the ability to come back and delete... this sucks :( the zip upload ability is critical with open source / board design projects.

It's a high current linear board that I designed around a generic TO-220 voltage regulator, thinking I'd use it with a 1083 for ~8A (or 7A?) of linear current, adjustable via trimmer.

I never tested it though, because an unrelated board where I implemented the ZXCT1050 (not ZXCT1009) as well, didn't work as expected, and I wasn't invested enough to figure out whether the ZXCT1050 was the culprit - so as a result, I never bothered testing this one.

I'm inclined to think that I may have made an error as a math error calculating the scaling resistors, because I think the implementation is otherwise sound.
 

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Re: Line Drive™ - A High Current Linear Driver

rhd said:
EDIT: WTF? When did LPF stop allowing uploads of zip files ?!? I guess I'm not sharing this after all.... I am happy to upload to LPF where I can easily come back and delete if that ever becomes neccesary, but I'm not going to start registering for file upload accounts, or using free ones where you lose the ability to come back and delete... this sucks :( the zip upload ability is critical with open source / board design projects.
Click to expand...

I use Box.com now, and it allows you to restrict access and/or downloads (if you want), as well as take it down permanently very easily. I think the file size limit per file is 200MB, but the account limit (if any) is very large.
 
Re: Line Drive™ - A High Current Linear Driver

rhd said:
EDIT: WTF? When did LPF stop allowing uploads of zip files ?!? I guess I'm not sharing this after all.... I am happy to upload to LPF where I can easily come back and delete if that ever becomes neccesary, but I'm not going to start registering for file upload accounts, or using free ones where you lose the ability to come back and delete... this sucks :( the zip upload ability is critical with open source / board design projects.
Click to expand...

Rename the file from .zip to .avi or something, and then when people download it they can rename it to .zip and open it.
 
Re: Line Drive™ - A High Current Linear Driver

I think they disallowed .zip attachments, at least for
a while, due to a script kiddie uploading malicious
.bat files inside them.
 
Re: Line Drive™ - A High Current Linear Driver

Ahh, thanks. I have a bit of experience with these
things (aside from lasers). I also had a little help
from the Chinese, although they probably copied it
from someone else. ;) Oh, and then there is also
some divine intervention.
 
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Re: Line Drive™ - A High Current Linear Driver

Looking good so far, interested in the scope results. Do you intend to sell these?
 
Re: Line Drive™ - A High Current Linear Driver

Rifter said:
Looking good so far, interested in the scope results. Do you intend to sell these?
Click to expand...

Yes. Also on the way to a scope test are
these.

IMG_1220.jpg
IMG_1223.jpg


These bring up the rear, < 700mA. I'm
especially hoping they will be good for 5mW
diodes, PHR, LPC, and everything in between.
 
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