My test load

[aXit]

Just thought I'd share my version of a test load.

It's kind of a rip off of HIMNL9, with the adjustable jumper; and epoxied up just like flaminpyro's.

(Sorry about the glare on the epoxy there)

It's selectable through 0.7V-8.75V in 0.35V steps by moving the jumper over 1N400x diodes, or shorting out a schottky (forgotten the part number) for the half steps.

It's connected straight to banana plugs for the current reading on my DMM, or I can put a 1 Ohm resistor on the pins above those two wires for voltage measurement.

Hope you like it, or feel inspired to make your own. (thanks HIMNL9)


aXit.

 

[billg519]

Nicely made, looks like a good, solid, durable and reliable test load. Meter plugs are a nice feature as well.

 

[spectral532]

Thanks for sharing. This gives me a lot of good ideas for building my next test load.

Nice soldering BTW, I can never get my joints to look that good. How do you do it?

 

[Glutton]

looks very nicely made.

good job

 

[aXit]

Nice soldering BTW, I can never get my joints to look that good. How do you do it?

Flux, lots of it. Usually:

-Tinned all contacts that I'm going to use before any components are put in.
-Components in, use tacky flux on all surfaces to be soldered; then have a ball of solder on the iron, and drop the entire ball onto the joint with flux on it, instant heat transfer, it means the flux can do its work, not just evapourate away.
-Use one of those vacuum solder extractors to pull away most of the solder.
-Use flux cored solder on the joint again, with traditional soldering method (heat joint, feed in solder) feed in enough that it fills the joint and is the same size as the rest.
-Isopropyl alcohol and an old toothbrush to clean up flux.

It really doesn't take as long as it would seem, all of them are done in a system. But it's worth it for me.

 

[spectral532]

Do you cut the component leads short before you solder? I hear that doing so can help achieve better looking joints.

 

[aXit]

Ussually, no, but in this particular case it was necessary.

The pin headers were already at a good height, the only leads I needed to change were the diode ones, which were bent to the next row as you can see. It would be impossible to make it look neat if they weren't the right length to start with.

 

[Gryphon]

Very clean build and very nice solder joints!

 

[Elektrotechniker]

Nice test load aXit