T&L Publications

My question is about one of your pieces of test equipment in Photo 3 of the power supply article: the "MOSFET LOAD BANK". Can you tell me about it?

Paul Pennington
Augusta, Georgia

Hi Paul,
Sorry for the slow response, I don't follow the forum every day.
The loadbank is home made. It is basically an array of IRF540 MOSFETs in parallel. There are source resistors to help distribute the power dissipation. A 100 ohm resistor close to each gate to stop oscillation then tied together to a variable supply. No feedback or anything fancy. Heatsink is a large 4"x4"x6" hollow block type with forced air cooling from a old inverter. Meter and shunt are ex military radio power panel. The step change is just an input pulse added to the steady DC gate bias.

Hope this helps.
Robert.

Wow,
For a while this was boiling like a pot at a small town chile cookoff?
Len