A simple, permanent-magnet dc motor is an essential element in a variety of products, such as toys, servo mechanisms, valve actuators, robots, and automotive electronics. In many of these applications, the motor must rotate in a given direction ...
Design Idea (DI) contributors have recently explored various possibilities for ON/OFF power control using just a momentary contact “shiny modern push-button,” many of which build off of Nick Cornford’s “To press on or hold ...
Some industrial applications require you to feed a low-power dc/dc converter from a three-phase source and possibly to deal with line-to-line voltages of 200 or 400 V rms. Further, the neutral terminal of the ac source may be unavailable for ...
An inverter provides power backup for mains-based appliances in the event of a power failure. Most of the inverters available in the market have complicated circuit designs and are not very economical. Some of them produce a square-wave output, ...
Figure 1 shows how to position a mechanical device into four discrete positions but with only two free outputs and one free input from the control system. The position depends on a set of cams and four corresponding limit switches. The 24V-dc motor ...
When driving an H-bridge or a similar circuit, you usually must ensure that two or more transistors are not on at the same time. Eliminating multiple transistors from turning on reduces power consumption and lowers EMI (electromagnetic ...
The circuit in Figure 1 allows standard TTL logic levels to safely drive a high-power dc load. The circuit provides for both signal and ground isolation as well as a solid-state circuit breaker. Figure 1. An overcurrent condition in this isolated ...
The MOSFET power switch is commonly the most vulnerable part of a new switched-mode high-power circuit. One threat for this device is exceeding the value of the maximum allowed pulse current. You cannot exceed this limit, even for pulse durations ...
Ideally (in that magical land where theory and practice are the same thing), the speed of a permanent magnet DC motor is exactly proportional to the input voltage: Speed = K S V, where constant K S is specific to the motor in question. But since ...
You can use the circuit in Figure 1 to monitor the rotating speed of a dc fan motor and sound an alarm if the motor stalls. One potential application of the circuit is monitoring the CPU-fan speed in a PC in which overheating the CPU can ruin the ...