Is this switching power supply worth the money that it cost 18 volts @ 20 amp

[sam_sam_sam]

Well guess what this is another case of using too much flux because as I put heat to the jumpers flux bubble up on most of them and a couple of I thought might be loose they were now all of them are solid when you try to move them and one terminal on each board where the mosfets the middle one on each and the middle pin on each board at least they were consistent about doing a shite job might as well be consistent about it as you can see in the left hand picture and the right hand side of the picture I forgot to redo this one but when I go back to the shed I will redo it before I remount the circuit boards back on the heat sink

Updated

i put it back together and it did not change anything so there must be something wrong with the board it self I do not have a scope so it is going to be a little difficult for me to troubleshoot why the current meter is jumping around what I going to do is check with my multimeter on current and see if it is really jumping around or not if it is I not sure where to start troubleshooting it from and would you know it that it would be the bottom circuit board the hardest one to get to

For now I just going to use the channel that works and see if is just the meter that is having the issue or is it something else

One note if I had a scope I do not know if I remember exactly how to correctly use and how to interpret the results I had a crash course when I took industrial electrical and automation in college/trade school but that was over 15 years ago and I probably forgot a lot of it I do remember some of it only because of watching YouTube videos on how to repair switching power supplies

One other note I saw a YouTube video about the issue with this electronic load about a capacitor in PWM circuit that causes this issue but it is not the exact same model I am sure if it is the same issue or not

[sam_sam_sam]

sam_sam_sam
umm… could have been a soldering defect from factory? Shit does happen… good plan… I’d do the same.

Like I said earlier I will post some pictures of the boards when I finish resolder the jumpers and the mosfets I hope this solves the issue

[CapLeaker]

sam_sam_sam
umm… could have been a soldering defect from factory? Shit does happen… good plan… I’d do the same.

[sam_sam_sam]

At least we can try fixing your load tester. Hopefully parts for it are available for it too.

Well after working today at work I decided to look at the electronic load testing machine and I found some things that do not look good on the jumper that go between the mosfets and the mosfets connections to the board and I think I found one that is loose in soldering joint on one end I going to redo all of the jumpers and the mosfets to board one looks very questionable I do not think a picture of these joints you will not see much you have to look at it under a lighted magnifying glass to see the questionable joints I will take some pictures of this when I finish redo doing all soldering joints

Now what is interesting about these jumpers on this double sided board on one side they soldered but on other of board these soldering joint traces do not go anywhere and they are not soldered now I would think that you solder both sides so you would have the strength of connections now that what I also going to do to make real good connections to the board for the mosfets

Now thes surface mount part well solder to the board so that does not concern me but the jumpers do concern me a lot so I going to take care of this issue and put it back together and see if there is any difference in its performance or not and go from there

[CapLeaker]

CapLeaker

Is there any load testing machine that can do what I want to do that has a computer interface to able to do data logging because this is what I am looking for

Or a voltage/current meter module that can handle at least 30 amp load that can do data logging that does not cost an arm and leg

Sure there is. The catch is the $$$. I suppose mine was one of the ones that came out in the first year. However, I do recall there are or were some rebranded ones of my machine. Would I buy another electronic load, probably… would I buy that exact one, hell no.
Got to admit I didn’t do any lurking at Ali lately either. Hopefully there is something better that this thing.

[sam_sam_sam]

CapLeaker

Is there any load testing machine that can do what I want to do that has a computer interface to able to do data logging because this is what I am looking for

Or a voltage/current meter module that can handle at least 30 amp load that can do data logging that does not cost an arm and leg

[CapLeaker]

I don’t run my electric load using software. I disconnected the USB board inside, so it is at least half way usable to adjust settings with the rotary encoder. I that USB board is plugged in, it will cost you a lot of swearing, waste precious 10 mins of your time, loose your sanity, etc just to make one silly adjustment let’s say increase the voltage setting from 5 to 6 volts. That’s all. It sucks that bad. With the USB board unplugged in the inside, the encoder works better, but still is a pain in the @$$end.
Decreasing the numbers is fine, but increasing the numbers absolutely suck balls. You can’t get lower than zero. Like I said, stay away from this crap.

[sam_sam_sam]

I watched a video about this electronic load testing machine that you mentioned “East Tester ET5410”
I have a question have you used the computer software and if so what did you think about how easy was it to use
Because I am looking for one that can be used with a computer for data logging and see how a switching power supply preforms over time and is the voltage and current stable over time to me this is very important information to know

I can do this with my battery testing machine but I am limited to either 5 or 40 amp
The catch is that the 5 amp one is limited to 24 for charging and for loading it can do up to 30 volts
The catch is that the 10 amp one is limited to 5 volts
The catch is that the 40 amp one is limited to 5 volts
The catch is that the 50 amp one is limited to 9 to 72 volts ( I do not remember what the actual amp rating is on this one I would have to look it up to be sure of it amp capacity

What I do not have is one that I can do from 3.3 volts to at least 120 volts at least 30 to 60 amps would be preferred unit I would like to buy one so I can torcher test switching power supply for at least for 24 to 48 hours ideally and longer if needed

The one I am looking at it says that it can be used on an iPad however I read the reviews on this particular application and they were horrible I would not buy one and think that I can do data logging with it

[CapLeaker]

I hope to start working on it in a few weeks or it might be longer than that but I am hoping that it not too long before I can working on it

Here is a picture of the load testing machine I plan on working on very soon I hope

If I have to buy another one I going to buy the same model number except that it is the A version which instead 80 volt version this one is 150 volt version

https://www.ebay.com/itm/12654203712...Bk9SR4SG-uy6ZA

It is only slightly higher in price than the original version that I have now

Here is a post on another forum site about this load testing machine

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testge...ectronic-load/

There is actually a review of this load testing machine on this forum as well

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/troubl...c-load?t=86168

I've got an East Tester ET5410. That thing is a b*tch to work with. It is very hard to make any adjustments on it. I even changed the rotary encoder on it and made zero difference. I got a slight improvement by unplugging the USB board inside the unit. Good thing is that I don't need it that often, so I don't care about the problem at the moment. BUUUUTTTT If I ever have to use that thing on a regular basis, I'll take a 20 ton excavator and resize the electric load to fit in someone's pants pocket.

[sam_sam_sam]

At least we can try fixing your load tester. Hopefully parts for it are available for it too.

I hope to start working on it in a few weeks or it might be longer than that but I am hoping that it not too long before I can working on it

Here is a picture of the load testing machine I plan on working on very soon I hope

If I have to buy another one I going to buy the same model number except that it is the A version which instead 80 volt version this one is 150 volt version

https://www.ebay.com/itm/12654203712...Bk9SR4SG-uy6ZA

It is only slightly higher in price than the original version that I have now

Here is a post on another forum site about this load testing machine

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testge...ectronic-load/

There is actually a review of this load testing machine on this forum as well

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/troubl...c-load?t=86168

[CapLeaker]

I have some other mod ideas that I am interested that I am playing in my mind on how I will approach it and if will be feasible to do or not

I need to find some time to see if I can repair a two channel load testing machine that has an issue on one channel because I have an idea of how I want to use it this going to depend on weather or not I can fix it or not I will be posting s post about it when I start working on it because I probably will need some help troubleshooting it to figure what is going on with this channel and why it fluctuating so much stay tune more to come later

At least we can try fixing your load tester. Hopefully parts for it are available for it too.

[sam_sam_sam]

Cool mod! I am liking it!

I have some other mod ideas that I am interested that I am playing in my mind on how I will approach it and if will be feasible to do or not

I need to find some time to see if I can repair a two channel load testing machine that has an issue on one channel because I have an idea of how I want to use it this going to depend on weather or not I can fix it or not I will be posting s post about it when I start working on it because I probably will need some help troubleshooting it to figure what is going on with this channel and why it fluctuating so much stay tune more to come later

[sam_sam_sam]

Cool mod! I am liking it!

I have a couple more of them to do and I need to buy a couple more of the 18 volt @ 20 amp switching power supplies
Because I also have the new Ryobi 18 volt battery chargers now come with a wall wart switching power supply and what I do not like about them is that you can only plug one of them in a single outlet because they are quite big for the outlet so my plan is to buy another switching power that I have been using on this project and do a project for the Ryobi battery pack chargers so I only use one outlet for charging several battery packs at one time at least this is the idea anyway

[CapLeaker]

I going to answer the question I posed in the title of this post and yes this switching power is well worth the money for this switching power supply and in fact I going to do another modification to a couple of more desoldering stations that I have so I can severely units so I can several different size tips

At least this is the plan for now

Cool mod! I am liking it!

[sam_sam_sam]

I going to answer the question I posed in the title of this post and yes this switching power is well worth the money for this switching power supply and in fact I going to do another modification to a couple of more desoldering stations that I have so I can severely units so I can several different size tips

At least this is the plan for now

[sam_sam_sam]

Progress on this project finally I am not done with it completely but I am getting somewhere with it though I put the modified controller power supplies in and I hooked it to the 18 volt @ 20 amp switching power supply and everything so far is working perfectly I even turned both the desoldering gun and soldering iron on at the same time and the vacuum pump as well did not even blink at all

I think I going to mount the switching power supply on the side of soldering station because that way I will not be tempted to put something on top of the cooling fan

The last picture is the soldering station in sleep mode so everything is working as expected

[sam_sam_sam]

Well I have not had time to finish this project yet but have not abandoned it some higher priority projects have gotten in the way but hopefully I can finish this project soon and put it back in service

[sam_sam_sam]

Well I got the second secondary switching power supply boards about 80% done and testing the second one for about an hour or so just to make sure that everything is good to go and then I will remove both original switching power supply in the dual soldering iron / desoldering gun station and put in the modified secondary switching power supply boards for the controller and the vacuum pump and the cooling fan and see how this works out if things go well then I will finish it permanently and put it into service and go from there

[sam_sam_sam]

New project for a 9 volt @ 40 amp switching power supply for a 8.4 volt battery pack that I am going to build for dual battery cells I want to build a 9 volt battery powered power supply for some 9 volt device that I have because I going to use some buck converter that controls voltage and current to charge the battery pack and a boost converter for the output

I am buying it from the same eBay seller that I bought the 18 volt @ 20 amp switching power supply from

They also sell a 13.8 volt @ 30 amp switching power supply that I also going buy in a couple of months for another project

[sam_sam_sam]

Update

I received the switching power supply and I tested in the ZD-915 desoldering gun station and it works perfectly fine with this switching power supply I did some testing and the results are in that post

With just the controller no heating element backlight and cooling fan 250 milliamperes
With the controller and the heating element and cooling fan and backlight it just above 5 amps
With the controller and heating element and the vacuum pump and cooling fan over 7 amps

If I were to use the dual soldering station i
Two heating elements and two backlights and two controllers would be a little bit over 11 amp
One vacuum and one cooling fan a little bit over 3 amps

For grand total of around 14 amps or maybe a little bit more than that depending on all the devices being on at the same time it might be a little bit more
Switching power supply is rated for 18 volts @ 20 amps