gerrysweeney.com – Page 5 – Sharing My Passion for Electronics Engineering and Software Hacking

HP 339A Teardown

By gerrysweeney on July 8, 2013July 10, 20176 Comments

A piece of equipment I use rarely but when I do I find really useful is my HP 339A Distortion Measurement Set. Built in the 70’s this unit has a precision sine wave oscillator and distortion measurement section. One of the things thats really nice is the oscillator and the notch filter are tied together and the notch filter auto-nulls to make measurements really easy to accomplish.

The build quality of this unit is impeccable, made by HP when they were making stuff properly. The entire chassis is made from folded high quality aluminium sheets with capture nuts and really precise machining. The main oscillator switches are coupled using a bar and wafer scheme but both the oscillator and the filter are fully screened and isolated in their own chassis sub-sections. The smell from inside the unit is that old-school electronics smell I used to encounter all the time when I was a kid taking apart old TV’s and Record Players. I don’t know what chemicals exactly make that smell but I am pretty sure if you could bottle it you could sell it – there is an idea for a unique aftershave! It could be called “Ye’old TV Man”!

Anyway, hope you will find the video interesting. Thanks for watching.

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Measuring Distortion with a HP 339A and a Keithley 2015 THD

By gerrysweeney on July 7, 2013July 10, 201717 Comments

I have had my HP 339A for a long time now and despite only using it a small handful of times it is a really great instrument – but – its big and takes up a lot of shelf space. A few weeks back a purchased a Keithley 2015 THD which is a 6.5 digit bench meter with a built in distortion analyzer, I bought it because of the distortion analyzer function. I would like to get some more instrument shelf space back so am able to replace the HP 339 with this 2015THD I will make that much-needed space. I decided to build a simple output circuit so that I can induce some crossover distortion and compare the basic measurements on these two devices to see the results. Now I must make it clear that this is a basic 101 on measuring distortion, I am sure there is a lot more to know that I do but I believe I cover off the basis.

The simple drawing I used to explain the test and test circuit.

I will tear down the HP 339A on video to show how nicely these are built. This is one of those rare “all analog” devices that has not digital parts at all, watch out for that video if you like seeing the guts of nicely built equipment.

Thanks for watching.

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Seven Decade Programmable Resistor – A Low Cost Solution

By gerrysweeney on June 30, 2013July 10, 201740 Comments

I have spent a lot of time over the years prototyping electronic circuits and the amount of resistors that have ended up in the trash because they are so cheap you don’t bother to keep them tidy or organised once you take them out of their organised storage – you know the story. One potential solution to this is a programmable resistance box but the problem with these things are they are bulky and expensive and do not lend themselves well to breadboard prototyping. The cost of construction means they are typically the reserve of high-precision resistance boxes. I have a CROPICO RBB6E resistance box in my lab which I open up to have a look inside, its really well made, mostly by hand too, far too nice to abuse in prototyping….

I looked around at what is available but did not find a solution that met my own requirements so I decided to design something simple myself. I also wanted to make a simple project to get manufactured by machine which apart from other things requires reasonable volume, and I thought this project would be useful enough to others that I should get some made and make them available.

Various Pictures

Home » Seven Decade Programmable Resistor - A Low Cost Solution » Decade Programmable Resistor

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Project Discussions

Project discussion thread on EEVBlog forums

I Need 10MHz – how hard can it be!

By gerrysweeney on June 24, 2013July 10, 201737 Comments

It all started when I wanted to calibrate my HP 53131A universal counter, which as it turns out probably has one of the crappiest and most disappointing standard oscillators ever put into a frequency counter, HP you should bow your head in shame….oh of course I forgot, a half reasonable oscillator is an “optional extra” when you by HP/Agilent – of course it is….anyway, on with the job at hand

If you have or want to play with an FE-5680A Rubidium Frequency Standard or an OSCILLOQUARTZ OCXO 8663-XS or a HP 53131A Counter or a Racal Dana 1999 counter or similar then this video will most likely be of interest 🙂 what I am trying to get is a predicable and reliable frequency and standard for my home lab.

I guess I will let the video do the talking on this one….

Here are a whole bunch of useful links that relate to this video (there are many more too if you search around the web)

Thanks to all of the authors and content creators for the above information. Thanks for watching.

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Omnitronic EDP 1000 Watt Class D Amplifier Teardown

By gerrysweeney on June 23, 2013July 10, 20177 Comments

Here I describe the basic operation and topology of a Class D amplifier and then tear down an Omnitronic 1000W amplifier to have a look and see what is inside. The big advantage of a Class D amplifier is the compactness and overall power efficiency. However, Class D amps are generally not used in High Fidelity application because of the limitations in dynamic range and distortion performance that can be achieved.

Here are the specifications scanned in from the user manual.

Hope the information is of some use. Thank you for watching.

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Fully Programmable Modular Bench Power Supply – Part 14

By gerrysweeney on June 16, 2013July 10, 2017129 Comments

I said last time I would look at the software and firmware for this post but I decided I needed to spend more time on the regulator to address the DC response issues I had observed, I felt this was more important to get right so this article focuses on that. The good news is, I have achieved good results and I believe the regulator design is complete – at least for the high current version of the module (0-8V 0-8A).

I had problems with the regulator over shooting by about 500mV when transitioning from a high power load to a low power load. There were two main problems, the first was down to the inductance of the wiring on the output, that creates a problem which in turn was amplified by the relatively slow response of the various amplifier stages. I have achieved significant improvement on my previous measurements by tuning response times through the various stages, this simply required lowing the impedance through the various stages to ensure the servo was able to respond more quickly to changes on the output. This was achieved by adding C24, C25, C39, C40, C41, C43, C45, C46, C47 and C48 to the input and driver stages. I also needed to throttle back the fast rise time of the control drive from the DAC to follow behind the response curve of the regulator circuit. These changes mean the regulator now delivers a clean and very acceptable dynamic response to fast-switching load conditions.

The Schematic

Here is the latest schematic which is at version 0.7 including all of the latest changes. The most significant changes are on sheet 3.

Various Scope Traces from Testing

Home » Fully Programmable Modular Bench Power Supply – Part 14 » PSU Part 14 Scope Traces » PSU Part 14 Scope Traces

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I now need to lay out the new PCB and get some ordered, I will do this over the next couple of weeks. I will definitely cover the development environment and the firmware in the next post as well as the serial protocol used to control and monitor the module.

Thanks for watching.

This content is published under the Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Various Pictures

Project Discussions

Other Resources I mention in the Video

The Schematic

Various Scope Traces from Testing