A 200 Watt Electronic DC Load

Here one can find a guide in building a good Electronic DC load

Comments

[vazerick]

Thanks a lot, I really like your writing style, at the moment, I’m actually working in a 40 Amp switching power supply for my final project thesis, this to feed a laser from the fiber optic laboratory, your design might actually become quite useful to me when I get the prototype of the power supply right, this of course would take to change your design a bit, do you think it could take 30 or 35 amps ? if yes for how long?, I was thinking on using a really low value resistor with HUGE wattage and with a huge heat sink on it, I still have to find a way to test the full load 40Amps (or at least 30, 40 might get dangerous)

[supersilve]

Hi vazerick, designing a 40 amp dummy load is no joke but i believe it could be done. Its not only current to be considered but the total wattage, i don't know what voltage you are using though. A large heat sink will be needed for sure. I had tried my transceiver power supply around 20 years ago which was 14 v- 30A with a piece of restive wire which was around 2mm thick. i hooked it up and hanged it in a bucket of water. That was my dummy load, well it worked well and gave time to test it. You can also try a piece of coat hanger wire about a couple of meters long and see what resistance it give, just coil it up in a spring form not to be bulky. good luck

[gada888]

Why you used a transformer that dual outputs14v and 10v.i happen to have an old transformer that dual outputs 13.5V and 9V.is it OK?

[pfred2]

When I needed a load to test a power supply I just paralleled a bunch of incandescent light bulbs together. Light bulbs suck down the wattage. Here's a picture of 5 automotive turn indicator bulbs drawing nearly 100 Watts

[tomatoskins]

Wonderful information! Thanks for sharing.