TI Class D EVM Board 50% Promotion

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The good news, a shiny new EVB was just handed to me by the FedEx guy.

The bad news, that big A$$ 48 volt power supply is dead (Lambda EWS 600 - 48). The fan spins and runs for over a minute after power is removed, but no voltage appears at the output terminals. Upon cracking it open, I find at least three PCB's in layers, So I probably have a slim chance of fixing it.

I'll try to fire the board up with bench power supplies later tonight. I will need to wire two in series to get enough voltage.
 

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I don't understand why they would even accept further orders for these if they can't get closer than "maybe three months after you ordered it" for a ship date.

Without warning mine was delivered on 10/27, so despite the email prediction of 12/29/17, it was actually received in a month from date of order. Now to give it a go.
 
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I think it was take orders, post nothing in the "expected ship date" spot on the invoice, quote a "last shipping day of the year" date only when asked, in order to collect enough orders to justify doing another build. These things are assembled by a contract manufacturing house where the cost per unit is inversely related to the order quantity. My guess is they pulled the trigger on the build once the backorder quantity reached the breakeven price for making, stocking and shipping a board.

If you are an engineer in even a smallish company that stands a chance of sticking a TI chip into a product some day TI or any large chip company will GIVE you the board free, and even offer design support. The list price of some EVB's is ridiculous, just to avoid dealing with people who don't really want to buy their chips, but overall they just break even on EVB's.

I was an RF engineer at Motorola and I used to get EVB's from all the major chip companies just by asking the sales engineer, even if I said it was for a home project. I built a few guitar amps with free chips from National Semi......I might have even built one for the sales engineers son. We stuck enough National Semi LDO's and switching regulators in our cell phones to cover a lot of free chips!
 
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... Anyone tried to order twice yet? :)

I did (tried to, anyway). Wouldn't let me use the 50% discount code a second time. I created a second account using my wife's info. But at that time, and ever since, I've been periodically checking and the 3255evm shows out of stock. I really don't need another amp, so I'm holding off on actually placing the order.
 
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My understanding is that places like Mouser or similar do sell these devices , but for a profit of course. So I suspect that TI doesn't care for their own sake, but need to be able to claim that they made some effort to control access to multiple orders retail consumers. Which they do, but can hardly be expected to have a police dept. to study orders.Companies could easily have various projects or teams using the same amp board, so it seems that a policy of not allowing a second order is unlikely. Also as someone mentioned, probably if you're General Motors or some such they'll send you 10 free!



I *may* have a professional and personal identity and had one shipped to each respectively. ;) 2x (2x SE, 1x BTL) will run my monitors + woofers nicely.
 
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I may have missed this In this thread, but noticed the TI ref designs are now copied and $59 including shipping from Ali. Has anyone tried these yet?

Assembled TPA3255 Digital Amplifier Board Class D Audio Amp Board 300W + 300W-in Amplifier from Consumer Electronics on Aliexpress.com | Alibaba Group

Those are cheap, have seen them mentioned. Not certain what buffers they use. EDM board uses 5532 for buffers, at least that is what they are writing in the EDM manual, can look at the boards later. The 3255 may be somewhat sensitive to buffer stage, but I do not really know, just assuming.
People seem to prefer the EDM board to the cheapest versions on ebay and such, do not know if it's just personal opinion or if there is something to it.

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At any rate, should be really clean up to 80-90 watts/8ohm, so may compare well to a proper class AB amp.
 
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I was out of town over the weekend, so I didn't have a look at the board until last night. But can definitely confirm that they're ne5532's per the evm manual.

Not having seen the knockoff versions, I can say the quality of the evm is quite quite high, and well worth the incremental cost in confidence in the part. It's also quite big!

Like 454casull, I'll be looking into pffb implementation, but need an evening to make sure I order the right stuff. What are people using for chassis?
 
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