Thanks Tom, and to be honest, I'm probably never, ever, going to need anywhere near 50 W of power. Having read your document about how much power you actually need, I think 5 W maximum is all I'd ever need (small room, listening position about 2m away, and the newer speakers aren't too bad with regards to sensitivity (90 db SPL)
They protect the four green bipolar caps from over-voltage during start-up. You'll notice Douglas Self uses the same trick in his amps.
Tom
Sorry to interrupt, I like your design and how you put thoughts into your product. But I just came across china website with your board displaying, while I was redirecting people to see your original design, I notice the board looks slightly different than yours,
is that your board or someone try to copy your board and profit from it?
HIFIDIYÂÛ̳-Ê·ÉÏ×îÅ£±Ælm3886À´ÁË - Powered by Discuz!
is that your board or someone try to copy your board and profit from it?
HIFIDIYÂÛ̳-Ê·ÉÏ×îÅ£±Ælm3886À´ÁË - Powered by Discuz!
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Thanks for alerting us. It clearly looks like copyright infringement.
This makes me so <insert several expletives> ANGRY.
We must band together and not give in to these scrupulous thieves.
Anand.
It's more than an attempt; they are linking directly to Tom's site for documentation and have posted his completed Power-86/Modulus-86 amp's Audio Precision measured graphs rather than posting graphs measuring their own device.
They even copied the BoM and the corresponding component identification on the board silkscreen; except for a different format chip at U3 which they still call U3.
The replication is so complete that I have no doubt that someone purchased a board from Tom and obtained full documentation as a result.
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Modulus-86: Composite amplifier achieving <0.0004 % THD+N.
When I was a kid, the Japanese companies were the pirates, when I just graduated from university, Taiwan companies were pirates, now at this age, China companies are pirates. I have no first hand knowledge what it was like before all this, but even nowadays, people making copies here are called clones. So I am confused, when we started to learn writing, we are encouraged to follow examples first. So I think it must be the education system...
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When I was a kid, the Japanese companies were the pirates, when I just graduated from university, Taiwan companies were pirates, now at this age, China companies are pirates. I have no first hand knowledge what it was like before all this, but even nowadays, people making copies here are called clones. So I am confused, when we started to learn writing, we are encouraged to follow examples first. So I think it must be the education system...
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Y'all may want to direct your righteous indignation at me as well. I'm giving away for free, the gerber CAD files for a form, fit, and function compatible upgrade of the Power-86. It's public domain.
For those who can't be bothered to send Gerbers to a Chinese PCB fab, I'm also selling blank PCBs for ridiculous cheap prices. And I sell complete, stuffed & soldered, assembled and tested power supply boards at a lower price than Neurochrome charges for a bare Power-86 PCB. In fact my price is quite a bit lower now that Power-86 ships from Canada and charges an international shipping fee. You don't have to buy anything before you can access the full and complete compete assembly manual & BOM; they are free and downloadable any time you like.
The RingNot design includes four discrete Soft Recovery siodes, plus two full CRC snubbers. The diodes are 30 amp, 200 volt, low Vfwd types (Fairchild FFPF30UP20) on heatsinks. These were one of the diode types measured and tested in the Linear Audio v.10 article about Soft Recovery diodes.
For those who can't be bothered to send Gerbers to a Chinese PCB fab, I'm also selling blank PCBs for ridiculous cheap prices. And I sell complete, stuffed & soldered, assembled and tested power supply boards at a lower price than Neurochrome charges for a bare Power-86 PCB. In fact my price is quite a bit lower now that Power-86 ships from Canada and charges an international shipping fee. You don't have to buy anything before you can access the full and complete compete assembly manual & BOM; they are free and downloadable any time you like.
The RingNot design includes four discrete Soft Recovery siodes, plus two full CRC snubbers. The diodes are 30 amp, 200 volt, low Vfwd types (Fairchild FFPF30UP20) on heatsinks. These were one of the diode types measured and tested in the Linear Audio v.10 article about Soft Recovery diodes.
Yeah. That's an obvious copy. Since I don't speak Chinese and can't use hifidiy.net beyond looking at pictures, would one of you (soongsc or flyingfishtw) please report the fake build as copyright infringement to the moderators of hifidiy.net?
If you need any information from me to do so, by all means just toss me a PM or email (tomchr@ my company name dot com).
Alternatively, if you can let me know how I file a report with the moderators of hifidiy.net, I'd appreciate it.
Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I appreciate it.
Thanks,
Tom
If you need any information from me to do so, by all means just toss me a PM or email (tomchr@ my company name dot com).
Alternatively, if you can let me know how I file a report with the moderators of hifidiy.net, I'd appreciate it.
Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I appreciate it.
Thanks,
Tom
Mark. If you want to give your work away for free that is certainly your choice and right. I, however, am not in a financial position where I can afford to do that. I am trying to make a living catering to the DIY Audio crowd. I don't know of any other business that give away their products for free.
You know how much work, effort, skill, experience, education, etc. goes into designing a good circuit and taking it to market. I'm really surprised that you condone blatant IP theft. It's that attitude that'll eventually kill high-end DIY audio. You'll get crappy circuits for free but anything high-performance will be fully assembled modules, multi-layer PCBs, with the part numbers of ICs sanded off to minimize copying.
Tom
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I was so confused that I went to study intellectual property law which further confused me when the Government can take your money for registered and approved patents, then suddenly one day tell you " oops, we made a mistake... and you get no protection, no reimbursement, no damage compensation, etc.... totally ignoring the original intent of the patent system as we were educated to believe...
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Tom, I have not compared the boards, but if enough modifications are made, you cannot apply copyright law, least not without a fight. So it depends on how exact it is. I just browsed though it briefly, and did not see any mention of sale. A few were wondering how it sounds, one made a remark that the builder only listens to 1KHz...
The builder mentioned he is putting the unit together after half a year effort to find some parts.
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Modulus-86: Composite amplifier achieving <0.0004 % THD+N.
Looked through the second page, the builder says the original designer is a foreigner, he got the pcb and parts from overseas, and is only assembling everything together.
BTW, I would never rely on an automatic translation of Chinese to English, never found one that did not make me laugh. Even I have to read twice to fully understand what people in China are saying, many expressions are not familiar to me, and I do try to get around people much younger than I to learn what's going on.
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Looked through the second page, the builder says the original designer is a foreigner, he got the pcb and parts from overseas, and is only assembling everything together.
BTW, I would never rely on an automatic translation of Chinese to English, never found one that did not make me laugh. Even I have to read twice to fully understand what people in China are saying, many expressions are not familiar to me, and I do try to get around people much younger than I to learn what's going on.
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Yes I sell my DIY audio stuff at breakeven; I don't lose money but I don't make money either. To me it's a hobby, not a business. I give away the circuit designs, schematics, PCB layout Gerber files, Bill of Materials, and step-by-step assembly guides for free. My price is zero, in part because my marginal cost is also zero: it doesn't cost me a single penny when someone downloads the Gerbers and sends them off to Seeed Studio to have 10 boards made for $15 including shipping. In fact it makes me happy when somebody does this!
Maybe you can find other dimensions on which to compete besides price. If you don't yet own an electronic load for power supply testing, Keithley sells a good one at a nice price. And there are very low cost Chinese electronic loads on fleaBay and AliExplode. You can compete on thoroughness of testing and characterization, for example. Power-86 is unregulated, so line- and load- transient testing is irrelevant, but if you ever do start selling regulated power supplies, you could test the holy hell out of them and make that testing part of your unique selling proposition.
I don't condone blatant ripoffs of copyrighted original works, but I do realize it's gonna happen whether I like it or not, and the most likely place where it's gonna happen first is China. I don't know what you or I or anybody else can possibly do about that, except to design in one or more OTP microcontrollers whose source and binary code you never NEVER let out of your lab. Do all programming yourself, don't use 3rd party burn houses, etc. Now you're relying on the impregnability of Atmel's "Security Bit" to prevent copiers from extracting your proprietary code out of a programmed unit. The Security Bit is imperfect but it sure is better than nothing.
_
Maybe you can find other dimensions on which to compete besides price. If you don't yet own an electronic load for power supply testing, Keithley sells a good one at a nice price. And there are very low cost Chinese electronic loads on fleaBay and AliExplode. You can compete on thoroughness of testing and characterization, for example. Power-86 is unregulated, so line- and load- transient testing is irrelevant, but if you ever do start selling regulated power supplies, you could test the holy hell out of them and make that testing part of your unique selling proposition.
I don't condone blatant ripoffs of copyrighted original works, but I do realize it's gonna happen whether I like it or not, and the most likely place where it's gonna happen first is China. I don't know what you or I or anybody else can possibly do about that, except to design in one or more OTP microcontrollers whose source and binary code you never NEVER let out of your lab. Do all programming yourself, don't use 3rd party burn houses, etc. Now you're relying on the impregnability of Atmel's "Security Bit" to prevent copiers from extracting your proprietary code out of a programmed unit. The Security Bit is imperfect but it sure is better than nothing.
_
It is definitely far too large a topic for this thread; suffice it to say that even in China, copyright infringement is illegal. I don't know if Tom has registered an Industrial Design* on his boards but if so, that is a further layer of protection available. There is no need to rely on patents when someone copies another's original work; it's illegal almost everywhere simply to copy it ... I suppose you could set up your factory in North Korea if you wanted.
In fact with regard to patents, it's actually easier to copy a patent than a copyright. You are legally allowed to make use of another's patent for research purposes. What you cannot do is lend, sell or otherwise distribute your research project. Once you are done studying it, you are legally obligated to destroy it.
In contrast, you cannot legally make even a single complete copy of a copyrighted work, for any reason. "Fair Use" does not apply (and is only applicable in the US in the first place), "fair dealing" (what the rest of the world allows) limits you to brief snippets, and copying of the entire work is strictly prohibited.
* Industrial Design refers to the "look and feel" of a product; it's why you can't make a copy of, say, a Corvette, while you could create a supercar if you so desired. Uniquely, and confusingly, the United States refers to registered Industrial Designs as "Design Patents", although they are not patents at all.
Why would we direct anything toward you, Mark? You are making available original work, and you still retain all the copyrights* and could register the industrial design if you wanted. The function of a power supply is not subject to patent protection ... there is no IP issue here between the Power-86 and your board. Carry on.
* Even if you have assigned those rights to the Public Domain, it remains they were your property to do so with. For it truly to be public domain you would have to allow commercial sale; if not then you by definition retain copyrights to the IP and potentially to the Industrial Design if you register it. Unlike in Tom's case, in the USA you have to register your copyrights for them to be entirely valid. In Canada, copyright is automatic upon creation of the work.
As for shipping from Canada, it's much less than international shipping via the USPS, and is roughly the same cost as equivalent tracked, insured domestic shipping via USPS. Your package will even be delivered by the USPS.
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