Hi all,
I am a bit new to building electronic circuits but have decided to have a go at a 0-30v 6 amp dc power supply. I have built most of the circuit on stripboard and I am about to mount the 2N3055 and the power resistors.
The question I have is can anyone see any problems with me mounting the transistor and resistor on the same heatsink beside each other or does this not really matter? The heatsink will be insulated from the surrounding casing and I am planning to use two 40mm dia fans for forced cooling.

Regards

Ian

 

Hello,

This page of ESP will give you a lot of information:
http://sound.westhost.com/heatsinks.htm

Bertus

 

Hi all,
I am a bit new to building electronic circuits but have decided to have a go at a 0-30v 6 amp dc power supply. I have built most of the circuit on stripboard and I am about to mount the 2N3055 and the power resistors.
The question I have is can anyone see any problems with me mounting the transistor and resistor on the same heatsink beside each other or does this not really matter? The heatsink will be insulated from the surrounding casing and I am planning to use two 40mm dia fans for forced cooling.

Regards

Definitely use the fans. I have a gang of six LM317s wired in paralell on one of my 0 - 24v variable bench supplies, attached to a rather massive heatsink with a 12v PC tower fan...... I tend to lean toward overkill engineering is these situations............Haven't heard so much as a peep out of the regs if I happen to step on them a little too hard

 

Your stripboard traces that are carrying even as much as the base current for the power transistors will become fuses when you apply a load to the circuit; burning open almost instantly.

You will need to reinforce your stripboards' current carrying ability by soldering some bus wire on top of the traces so affected. AWG22 is good for up to 5A.