RE: The Crazy Inductor Learn-o-Nator Put to Use: Experimenting with Inductors Blog 2 of 2

shabaz — Fri, 07 Feb 2020 12:08:26 GMT

Hi Sean,

This is great to see the prototyping pre-PCB! The TI tool is awesome.

One small point (it doesn't detract from your conclusions which are right), the chart from the Oki part although it has the 78.. prefix, is a switching regulator, so easy to miss - I only know it because I've used that part previously and recognised the number.

The chart for linear regulators will look worse the higher the input voltage, since more power is being dissipated in the regulator versus the load. In other words, it will be high efficiency when the input voltage is close to the output voltage (there's the dropout voltage as the minimum difference), but will drop loads as the input voltage gets higher. Sometimes it's not bad (e.g. if the overall power consumption is low anyway, then efficiency might be less of a requirement, even though it is still inefficient, i.e. depends on the use-case) but often it's bad!

RE: The Crazy Inductor Learn-o-Nator Put to Use: Experimenting with Inductors Blog 2 of 2

phoenixcomm — Thu, 06 Feb 2020 22:16:26 GMT

Neet