Thursday, April 15, 2010

Current Booster

THE BOOSTER!


Well, ok, not that booster!

Another "rush" special - to boost the current drive from a voltage signal. Our customer needed -10 to +10 volts to drive a 50 milliamp load. The voltage output from their control signal could supply only a fraction of that, so they needed an output-equals-input driver or current booster. They called us.


  • Additional needs: "ASAP - yesterday if possible" because they had just discovered the system problem.

  • Very high accuracy for their test application.

We got lucky. Years ago we solved another customer's high-current requirement by designing a custom circuit board. The requirements were different, but we were able to use that board to assemble the required circuit. It so happened that we had three of those boards left. Our customer needed four, but two could wait. We received the order March 22, shipped the first two March 23 and ordered a few more boards from a quick-turnaround service.

Accuracy? We guaranteed +/-3mV on a 20 volt wide span (+/-0.015% of range).

The customer has now asked us to quote on an 8-channel version.