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Power Supplies Again?!!!


If you are sick of them at this point, you know how I feel.  I was missing a switch.  That's just shocking.  The only way to turn it off was to unplug it. I had no indicator lights as well.  Guess I was not thinking much about safety when I built it.  Another problem with my power supply was I was using old oil and paper capacitors. They work and I still have them but they take up a lot of space, are not as reliable, and on the whole, my power supply was rather ugly.

The new sexy version of my solenoid power supply!

Out with the old and in with the new. This is my rebuilt power supply. I grabbed a scrap piece of aluminium from work and got a 90 deg angle put in it. The aluminium will act as a heatsink and also minimize electromagnetic waves emitted by the power supply though this is small because I'm using a toroidal transformer when compared to a conventional transformer. I plan on using some chicken wire I happen to have to make a faraday cage around it as well. Not needed but it will minimize any interference it would have with any of my other electronics, if any. The rectifier bridge is under the circuitboard and attached to its nice new big aluminium heatsink. The circuitboard is on some spare standoffs that I had. I purchased a tap and die set off Kijiji for $20 to tap the holes for the standoffs. The hole for the switch was cut using my jigsaw.  If you noticed, I now have five 4700 uF capactiors to replace the old paper and oil capacitors.


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