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

[sam_sam_sam]

https://www.ebay.com/itm/164440680270?var=464055952719

[CapLeaker]

That's actually cheap! At least for me up here.

[sam_sam_sam]

That's actually cheap! At least for me up here.

I think about buying it for the desoldering station that I do not have a switching power supply and doing surgery on the original switching power supply that I talked about in another post do you think that I could modify it with this switching power supply that I linked in this post

[nobbnobb1]

That's not a bad price. For me, I wanted somwthing high current and the cheapest way was to just build out an old ATX computer power supply. You can buy a cheap DC-DC adjustable regulator, a small voltage/current display, and some knobs.

[sam_sam_sam]

That's not a bad price. For me, I wanted somwthing high current and the cheapest way was to just build out an old ATX computer power supply. You can buy a cheap DC-DC adjustable regulator, a small voltage/current display, and some knobs.

The issue is with the superiority ic chip that is the issue if you disable it then you have no over current protection and for me this in an acceptable situation to be in yes I have played with computer switching power supplies for educational purposes before just to see if it could be done but personally I would not put them into service permanently because I would not trust them for reliability for the electronics equipment that I would want to power

Now I have some battery testing equipment that I going to modify the switching power supply to run three battery testing machines and all it really powers is the data logging system controller that communicates to the computer so that you can see it in a graphical chart on the computer screen

These battery testing machines were damaged by me trying to test battery packs with BMS protection boards because this battery testing machines works off of a 24 volt switching power supply even though the charging / discharging controller works on 12 volts because it has a 12 volt regulator on the mosfets board which is the part that has gone bad

But it is functional in the monitoring mode which is why I going through all this trouble with this system setup and I going to use a switching power supply that has voltage and current adjustable for what ever voltage and current that is needed but I have to modify it slightly so that it can interface with the system controller on the battery testing machine and then I will be able to test battery packs that have BMS protection boards and not do damage to the controller circuit

I have figured out how the mosfets board got damaged it because the controller put 24 volts momentary to the battery cell or cells depending on the battery pack setup and BMS protection board will turn off when it see high voltage or high current so that is how the controller board got voltage spikes and destroy it self ( the graphics on the chart told me what was going on when typing to charge battery packs that have BMS protection boards on them you could see the voltage spikes on the chart not all BMS protection boards do this but some of them do this very badly )

I talk about this in another post about exactly what happened and what I plan on doing with these battery testing machines that have failed

I also have soldering / desoldering stations switching power supply failure as well after many hours of use I have not exactly determined what has failed in these switching power supply and I am getting really tired of replacing the hole unit just because the switching power supplies are not replaceable so this is why I was trying to find a suitable replacement switching power supply and modifying it to power the soldering / desoldering system power supply yes it not going to be original but I really do not care about this aspect of this as long as it gives a lot more hours of use until the controller takes a shit or the vacuum pump takes a shit or some other catastrophic failure happens and it would be cheaper to just replace it with a new one ( This is another example of very poor design of a switching power supply circuit )

I had to try this several times before I got it to work more or less but it was not a perfect solution unfortunately

I also have a brand of battery powered power tool that has an issue with the switching power supply transformer seriously overheating to the point that I will not use it anymore because of this issue but I learned from this switching power supply how to modify the switching power supply board and still be able to use charging controller board function the only issue that I ran into was that the charging controller is very picky about the voltage level and if fluctuation is to much it shuts down and I have not figured out how to fix that issue but the manufacturer of this switching power supply battery operated power tool charger has finally offered a dual power switching supply that has USB charging ports that I use it for two cooling fans that keeps the switching power supply transformer and all of its components overheating situation under control and is very usable this way

The question I have to ask you is what are you trying to use this power supply for and how picky is it if it has some kind of controller in it might be picky about how smooth the power supply voltage is or are just wanting a switching power supply to power electronics in general if it then as long as put filtering capacitors on the output this should work fine

One note you can buy switching power supplies that have a current rating anywhere from 10 to 20 amp that voltage and current adjustable but they are a little pricey than a standard switching power supply I have several of them and they do work fairly well but if you decide to buy one I would highly recommend that you do a total recap of the board except the main filtering capacitor they start around $50.00 to over $100.00 depending on the voltage and current rating it has unfortunately Mean-well does not make a version like this as far as I know I have not personally seen one offered most of the ones that I have seen are Chinese manufacturers that have this type of switching power supply and they have a current and voltage meter module on them as well

Here is example of one that I was talking about

https://www.ebay.com/itm/276342873216

Here is another example of one that I was talking about

https://www.ebay.com/itm/276303332637

[sam_sam_sam]

The switching power supply is suppose to be here sometime tomorrow afternoon and I might get to do some primary testing on weather or not I can get the desoldering station to work on this switching power supply but we will see if it going to work with out any issues

[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

[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]

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]

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]

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]

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

[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]

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

[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

[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]

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 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]

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 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.