• WARNING: Tube/Valve amplifiers use potentially LETHAL HIGH VOLTAGES.
    Building, troubleshooting and testing of these amplifiers should only be
    performed by someone who is thoroughly familiar with
    the safety precautions around high voltages.

Janus Shunt Regulator / Aikido Octal build

That's a big one, 2 inches tall. If you have the space within the enclosure, then I'm sure that would work great. I think you can use a 1 inch tall one and be fine. The bigger one will cool more effectively (more surface area). I don't have the engineering chops to calculate how much heat dissipation is actually needed here.

That heatsink is designed to be mounted into holes (pads) on a PCB.

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Oh man I'd have to dig out my old thermo text for that. IIRC with a parallel finned sink and natural convection there's a simplified case to use so you don't have to dive into Nusselt and Rayleigh. Well....in their complex forms anywho :D

I'm guessing for just 10W of P,diss you'll be fine with a 1-1.5" package.
 
more area, more better
more air! more better as well.

Generally the ruler for heatsinks is (*C/W)

so a 10 c/w would get 10*C hotter than surrounding air for every 1W of dissipation. Lower number means the sink works better.

Since you're around ~10W of P,diss lets also assume that you're at 25C ambient, so you've only got about 125*C to work with MAX (graphs only go up to 150*C). This gives you a minimum c/w on the heatsink of 12.5.

I wouldn't take it much higher than about 7.5, after that your output voltage starts to deviate. Here's one that's 3.5 which would work pretty well.

TO-220 heatsink
 
While we're on the subject of heatsinks... Here's a question: If you take a TO-220 package and heatsink it to a strip of L-channel aluminum that's about 2 inches tall, what's the approximate C/W rating you'd expect? I was thinking something like this:

91fd58a3-ced2-4fe8-9bba-bf88461d7bc8_1000.jpg


Crown Bolt 3/8 in. W x 1/2 in. H x 48 in. L x 1/8 in. Thick Aluminum Trim Channel-42530 - The Home Depot

Sorry if this is taking the thread off-topic. You can tell me to take it elsewhere, it's OK.

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Another question I just had. What gauge of hookup wire is recommended? Is 22ga able to hand the amps or do I need to up up in size? I was thinking something like this, PTFE High Temperature Stranded Wire

22 gauge hookup wire is fine for up to many amperes of current over the lead lengths you'll see in a typical audio product. 24 gauge would be fine too, but thinner gauges are more fiddly to work with.

Googling 'current capacity for 22 gauge hookup wire' I found a few sites with specs listed:

American Wire Gauge table and AWG Electrical Current Load Limits with skin depth frequencies and wire breaking strength

Wire Gauges - Current Ratings

According to the second one, 22 gauge 7 to 24 strand hookup wire is rated for 2.1A. Solid core wire has a higher current rating than stranded wire.

I guess a good practice would be to use 22 gauge for signal and B+ wiring, and 18 gauge solid core for heater wiring, which is rated up to 9.5A. That should cover anything you'd see in a normal audio amp.
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I figured you guys might like that one. As an aside I'm decently versed in thermo-fluids and circuits both and it was always hilarious watching folks on either end struggle with the reciprocal concepts.

IE,

temp (C/F/K/R) is analogous to voltage (V), flow (W) is analogous to current (I), and resistance is fit in either one only its in (W/m) for thermal properties.

Same concepts apply to mechanical systems force (N) is analogous to current, velocity (m/s) is analogous to voltage. An additional term is mass (kg) is analogous to capacitance.

The really cool part is that (generally) watts in either system match up! I mean the energy has to go somewhere right?! So you dissipate 10W of electrical energy.....means you dissipate 10W of heat. Now you've got a common denominator between the two. Science is ******* awesome :p


Once you got a heat problem into its electrical equivalent the sparkies could fly through it. Same goes for the mechies, put an electrical circuit into terms of water in a pipe or springs and dampers and the lightbulb goes on all of a sudden :D Same reason why when I found that article the other day I earmarked it to share, does a good job at relating the two terms ;)
 
Most of the parts are in, I meant to order the cap kit with the Aikido board so I will have to source my my own. I emailed Broskie but I have not heard back from him yet on ordering the capacitors.

A photo of my bench with some of the parts. It hasn't been this clean in awhile; however, the shelf underneath is in need of organizing.
 
After sitting around for a while I am back to working on my Janus Shunt regulator and Aikio octal build. I was in the process of testing the heater side of the janus shunt regulator when diodes D2 and D5 gave up the ghost. I checked their orientation and they are orientated correctly. The configuration is setup as a fullwave bridge rectification with two tranformers one for the B+ and one for the heater. The B+ transformer is an Edcor XPWR163 which is a 120V, 60Hz. line to 550V (275-0-275) at 150mA center tapped, 6.3V (3.15-0-3.15) at 5A center tapped and 5V at 3A. I am not using the 6.3V tap. The heater transformer is a Hammond 167N12 which is a 12.6V CT transformer.

I measured the Hammond transformer and I am get just over 14V out of the secondaries.

The diodes are MUR410G which have a 4A rating, the secondaries on the Hammond have a 4A rating. Do I need to step up to a diode with a larger amp rating? I am trying to post a schematic but D2 and D5 make up have of the rectifier.
 

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