"petrus bitbyter" <
petrus....@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:4ea31dff$0$482$e4fe...@dreader26.news.xs4all.nl...
Every example that I've seen so far, has the resistors badly discoloured and
the print and substrate scorched. On some, one of the resistors has been
open, so the network has not been doing the job it was put there for, at
all. They are 3 watt resistors, and even when the supply *appears* to be
running correctly, they get hot enough for you to say that they are probably
dissipating a good 3 watts, and maybe a bit more, so I would guess that you
would have to say that from that angle, it's a badly designed bit of
circuitry. I am fairly convinced that the purpose of the network is to
attenuate the big spike that occurs on the leading edge of the switching
waveform. This would tie in with why they have used about the biggest film
resistors they could get, rather than using a higher power wirewound type,
which would have a fair bit of inductance. I would also surmise that they
have used two x 150 ohm resistors rather than a single 330 ohm, to try to
spread the dissipation a bit.
When you replace the resistors, they still run hot, with no visible signs on
the 'scope of any 'RF' on the waveform, so you'd have to say that it *is*
working correctly. What led to this thread in the first place was that when
I was initially evaluating these supplies for the company that wants them
repairing, after I replaced the resistors, they ran very hot when the supply
was loaded, but seemed to just run 'acceptably' hot when it was idling.
Likewise, when loaded, the switching FET got very hot, but was almost cold
at idle.
However, when I next tried them - same conditions for i/p voltage and load,
as far as I was aware - they now seemed to be working much better in that
the resistors were just acceptably hot for all conditions, loaded or not,
and the FET remained cool also. So this has now led me to believe that it
must have been something I was doing differently - and wrongly - when it was
running very hot. So, a mistake ? Yes, probably. As you say, we all make
them, and this has got to be one of the easiest trades for doing it in.
I've just heard from the company that they are sending a bunch more up this
week, so if there's some more of this type amongst them, I'll have some more
'untouched' ones to see what happens this time.
Arfa