Comment: Power supply design – To build or to buy?

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Power supply design has always been a bit of a topic – long-term followers of the OEMsecrets article series know that repairing TMI usually starts out with power supply trouble. Due to that, buying an off-the-shelf module can be attractive. Here are a few parts which caught our eye recently.

From Germany with love…

One part which caught lots of attention recently comes from Weidmüller – the company is usually known for its easy-to-insert connectors commonly found on 3D printers. The designation 1469530000 reveals a relatively uncommon part – feast yourself on figure A below.

While three-phase current systems might not be an electrical engineer’s everyday fare, one still meets them quite often – designing a power supply for them is an especially hairy affair due to the tremendous amounts of power which can be set free if something does go wrong.

Weidmüller offers the part in various output modes – the example we picked here provides a neat 5A and 24V.

You can see the supplier details via our EW-Compare tool, powered by OEMSecrets. See directly below the article for the latest pricing and availability information.

Traco Power’s TMR 1212 family

Should you ever feel bad about your DC-DC converter design skills, fret not. Traco Power’s TMR 1212 family is a series of SIP modules which act as buck or boost converters – impressively, they can also be used to split up a single supply into multiple different rails.

All of this is accomplished with an efficiency ranging from 75 to 85% – dedicated converter designs might be a bit more efficient, but also headaches when sourcing coils and other parts.

Furthermore, the SIP module “stands” on your PCB – you need to give up but 2 square centimeters of space if one of these modules happens to find its way into your circuit.

Was it worth it?

Before leaving you with these parts, allow us to impart some stranger thoughts. CUI – the company is well known for all kind of mechanical gadgetry – published an excellent whitepaper comparing bought and self-developed solutions. It can be accessed at by clicking here – simply scroll to the bottom and download the full PDF if you want to find out more…

The OEMSecrets team

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