The Living Power Supply Thread

[mkawa]

I need a bench power supply. linear regulation, low ripple, 1 or 2 rails. should be able to do up to 30v 3-5A on one of the rails, fine and coarse voltage and current limiting, etc.

as usual i'm on a budget (a tiny one). suggestions?

mastech and rigol seem to be the leaders here. anyone use their benchtop supplies and have feedback?

[SmallFry]

I use a PSU from an old Desktop. I really should add a few petentiometers to a box and what not to make it a bit cleaner.

[mkawa]

LINEAR (switching power supplies have a lot of high frequency noise)

[SmallFry]

Ah, I never noticed in my applications much.

[alaricljs]

My bench supply is from Electro Industries... 30v 3A, does what I need.  Got for free from a previous lab job, and have never been in the market.

What's your use case? 

[mkawa]

right now, i need to power arm and atmel based dev boards. for that, switching is no problem. i also want to sink some serious power into heating filaments (switching again is no problem for that). BUT pretty soon i'm going to need to drive and test stepper and linear dc motors and noise is a big deal there, as i'll be doing error measurements. basically, it's going to be a real lab supply for research, so i need to minimize sources of noise. if there's a particularly nice modern switcher lab supply (some modern switchers have LESS ripple than older linear regulators) then please point me to it. (for example, check out the ripple and noise on some newer TDK-lambda supplies. they're switchers but you wouldn't know it from any measurement device that costs less than 2 grand)

[mkawa]

i ended up buying this: http://www.amazon.com/Mastech-HY3005F-3Triple-Linear-Power-Supply/dp/B004ISD7T6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1370819372&sr=8-1&keywords=lab+power+supply

it's a shockingly good deal. unsurprisingly, it doesn't put out quite as much power as advertised (in my copy, both rails top out at 4A @ 30v), and the inbuilt meters are not all that accurate, but it's beefy as **** and is incredibly stable.