How to Design a Power Supply in Five Minutes

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1 Power supply design

2 All that in 5 minutes

Power supply design

Power supply design is an otherwise very demanding exercise. The design engineer is first required to define the power supply’s specifications. He will then be required to decide the topology. One the topology is complete; the engineer would then have to look for an appropriate IC that will meet the specifications. The engineer would also be required to calculate the power components that will work in tandem with the IC and then search and purchase them. He would then proceed to draft and enact a schematic. This is not only time consuming but also exhausting. The resulting product may not also be efficient.

All that in 5 minutes

There are tools that have been designed to take away all that hassle. There are four key requirements that are critical in the design of power supply, voltage input, current input, voltage output, and current output. Once you have those marked out; these tools can take you from specifications to the final schematic diagram really quickly. One such tool is the LTpowerCAD.

LTpowerCAD

LTpowerCAD is a free tool that is available online. It was first developed in 2014. It has a huge library of thousands of components that are constantly revised and added through updates. This tool has no internet bandwidth limits since it runs on Windows PC. It’s a fine tool that has been developed by power engineers. You just need to go to their website, download it, and then install it. It is easy to use, fast and produces high-quality designs. Using LTpowerCAD you only need to follow 5 simple steps:

Enter the power supply’s spec
Select components as guided by the tool
Conduct real-time efficiency and loss optimization
Conduct real-time loop gain and transient design and optimization
Produce BOM summary and size estimation.

Step1

You need to enter the voltage input (alongside min and max voltage input), voltage output and output current, you can now click on the search button. LTpowerCAD will then give you a list of suitable ICs and their topologies. Click on your preferred choice to proceed to the next step.

Step 2

The tool will then give you a schematic diagram complete with the IC and accompanying power components. The components come in recommended values but you can still change them if you want to. The tool also offers design warnings to guide designers in choosing the appropriate values of the components should they choose to ignore the recommended values.

Step 3

The tool generates real-time estimation/comparison based on the values of the components. This way the designer will be able to optimize the efficiency and reduce energy losses.

Step 4

You can conduct real-time loop gain and transient optimization based on the components chosen.

Step 5

You can now generate a summary report, BOM and size footprint of the components

Summary

LTpowerCAD enables you to go from specifications to BOM in less than 5 minutes. It’s fast, efficient, and reliable. It takes away all the hassles of power supply design.