Suggested budget pwr sply topologies?

[kegger]

Curious what others have used and or have found that work decent.

Not talking about that power supply where your buying everything to
exactly what you need but more made out of your junk box so to speak.
(for like building to just try things out and maybe build better later)

Say yu got the usual trannies layin around and a decent assortment of
caps plus power resistors and a few chokes but not a power trannie to
where it has enough voltage to do a choke input and get the voltage out
of the power supply your after as it would be to low.

How many stages would you go after?
Cap input?
Resistor input?
If you had a choke to use but couldn't use it on the input would you try
and make it the last filter, like say a c,rc,lc filter? or in the middle maybe
an rc,lc,rc filter or some other config, less or more stages? Size of choke in henries?

I generally build tube rectified power supplies most of the time.

Would you build it different for an amp as you would a preamp?
Say the amp was push pull el34 or the pre was a basic 12bh7 unit.
(Just giving examples so someone doesn't ask what would it be used for)

I'm trying some different configs with parts I got layin around and just wonder others input.

Any other configs outside my questions are welcome as well for any budget supply.

Thanks in advance for any and all replies some may want to share.

[ray_moth]

The most obvious first suggestion is to do some modeling with the PSUD2 power supply simulator. This gives decent accuracy and you can try all sorts of combinations of parts that you have available. In case you're not familiar with it, go here and click on Software Downloads. This will lead you to the page where you can see information about PSUD2 and download the software free of charge.

You need to be able to estimate the inductance and series resistance of each choke you have and also the winding resistance of each transformer you're thinking of using, because PSUD2 uses these in its simulation.

When you run PSUD2 you need to set a simulating time and a reporting delay. If you set these too short, you will be seeing results before the circuit has settled down (i.e. basically, while the smoothing caps are still charging).

[kegger]

Thanks, much agree'd I use PSUDII all the time.

I'm just after how people like to impliment there supplies or suggestions on how or why.

[DrDeville]

Originally posted by kegger
Thanks, much agree'd I use PSUDII all the time.

I'm just after how people like to impliment there supplies or suggestions on how or why.

You may encounter a number of different styles, and certainly from people more knowledgeable than me.

Let me suggest some general rules and others may comment.

1. Adding stages seems to improve performance dramatically, total capacitance & inductance being equal.

2. More capacitance & inductance is better than less.

Yes, I know that's pretty trivial, but if I were you, I'd start with the biggest two caps and inductor in CLC configuration, model that with PSUDII, and then start adding LC stages to the load end in my model, and see what happens.

This may well be nothing you haven't thought of before, but there ya go!

[kegger]

Thanks, I've built many power supplies with different topologies and
used PSUDII to varify things with and built the units or modified some
units that were allready built with fine results.

But as you see with PSUDII there are many means to the end and I'm
just curious if there are any suggestions as to how or why to do it in a
certain way to get good results.

I generally build with enough stages or capacitance or inductance and
or resistance to keep the ripple quite low and it seems to work nice.

Many suggest/believe that the best supplies are built with an inductor/
choke as your input or that a small oil cap as your first stage is a good
start to your supply but many times you can't use the choke input in a
supply your mocking up as the voltage drops to far, so would a cap then
be your next best choice for input? Is a resistor ever a good choice? What
would be considered a good way to end your power supply? If you had a
choke but couldn't use it as your input what is the best utilization of it then?

Those are the kinds of things I wonder about and what others thoughts/
experiences on the subject might be.