If you have an electronics bench, it follows that you will need some form of bench power supply. While many make do with fixed-voltage supplies it’s safe to say that the most useful bench power supplies have variable voltage and a variable current limiter. These are available in a range of sizes and qualities, and can be had from the usual online suppliers starting with a surprisingly small outlay.
There is however a problem with inexpensive bench power supplies. They are invariably switch-mode designs, and their output will often be noisy. Expensive linear supplies provide a much more noise-free output, but do so at the expense of excessive heat loss when regulating a high voltage drop.
One solution is a mixed-mode design, in which a switch-mode supply does the hard work of reducing the voltage most of the way, and a linear regulator drops the last couple of volts to provide a noise-free output. [Andrei] shows us his design for just such a mixed-mode supply, and it’s one you can have a go at building yourself.
His primary supply is an off-the-shelf switcher that turns mains AC into 24 V DC. This then feeds an LTC1624 buck converter that brings the voltage down to about 1.2 V above the final output voltage, this is in turn fed to a parallel pair of LT3081 linear regulators that deliver the final noise-free output. There is an INA260 for voltage and current measurement, and an Arduino with LCD display as a user interface. His prototype has been nicely constructed using a four-layer PCB, though he suggests it could be made on stripboard with the appropriate SMD adaptors. The cardboard chassis he’s used looks slightly alarming though.
We’ve covered numerous bench power supplies here over the years here at Hackaday. If it is an author’s favourite you are seeking though, take a look at the 723.
