#104 Reverse engineering an old linear power supply
Recently I came into possession of two working ups devices from 1993. both of them had old capacitors and old 12v7a lead acid batteries inside the devices.
First thing I did was clean the cases and the PCB boards. Once that was done I replaced the old capacitors and the 12v7a batteries, then I tested both devices. both work fine but the design is old and a bit dangerous.
So I decided to reverse engineer the circuit in order to better understand the design and to see if I could make any improvements to a design I would like to make.
While reversing the PCB I noticed that the mains earth and the GND of the circuit were connected together. I also notices sone discoloration from what looks like heat between the regulator and the transformer. Also the 330 ohm resistor for the led appeared to be discoloured from what also looks like excessive heat.
With these issues in mind I also noticed that the heatsink for the LM317T was very small and close to the transformer and the mains 1A fuse was placed after the choke and varistors instead of before them.
In conclusion I decided to choose between a different regulator at a fixed voltage or a chain of 4 LM317Ts providing around 6A of peak current, Since I do not need to adjust my voltage like the original circuit I should be able to get 13.75v by using a fixed 1k and 10k resistor. I also wanted better heat dissipation and Amps so I will definitely install good heatsinks with thermal compound. Depending on the size of the enclosure I get for the project I may add a fan.
The project files and components list etc. can be found on my Github here.