Could someone please offer their opinion on whether my circuit would work well for turning on an output via a CPLD. The output voltage at PIN0 will be 3.3V. I want logic 1 to turn on my Q1.
Regards, oldmanraskers.
Could someone please offer their opinion on whether my circuit would work well for turning on an output via a CPLD. The output voltage at PIN0 will be 3.3V. I want logic 1 to turn on my Q1.
Regards, oldmanraskers.
By lowering the values of R3 and R4 you will make the biasing of the MOSFET firmer. Currently you have a Collector Current of only 1.5 mA on Q1. This transistor can handle up to 800 mA collector current. All the MOSFET is looking at is the Voltage at the gate relative to the source. If R3 is too large the capacitance of the gate will act as an RC circuit and it will slow it down. Whether this is what you are seeing in your simulation I am not sure. Congratulations on getting up and running on the LTSice so quickly.
John
If you want to minimize design effort, you could use a 'logic optoisolator with push-pull output.' The push-pull feature will minimise the effect of gate stored charge. Schmidt-action will protect us from the possibility of chatter. Spend the extra buck 'til your unit n causes this to be uneconomic, which may be never.
This is a fairly bad circuit - you would do much better with an N channel MOSFET (cheaper for same spec) and ground referred drive means it's much less likely to do odd things when you switch. The problem is that you won't easily find a 40V or more rated MOSFET with guaranteed on resistance at 3V gate drive. So I'm with John B on this - you want to drive a solenoid so use a solenoid driver !
It's cheap, needs no additional parts, you get 7 drivers for the price of one, it can drive 300mA with 3V from your CPLD, it comes in a nice DIL package which can go in a socket or not ....... what's not to like !
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MK
I've been looking at the drivers and they might be the way to go, especially since the lite version of Eagle CAD limits the board size I can use. @Michael Kellett I am confused by something you said regarding 3V gate drive - since I'm using the BJT to switch the MOSFET, doesn't that mean the gate drive can be much higher?
Using a transistor as well as several resistors to drive the MOSFET just seems like a waste of soldering (not to mention parts) but you are right in that you can have as many volts of gate drive as you like.
If you use an N channel MOSFET you can drive it directly from the CPLD (a series resistor is a good idea but still a lot less parts) but there are very few MOSFETs around that guarantee operation with 3V gate drive (and I couldn't find one in a package that you would want to use).
So if you have a choice between 4 resistors, one diode, one MOSFET and one transistor (16 pins, 6 parts) and one 16 pin DIL package (with 6 spare channels) it seems like a no-brainer to me.
MK
You're right of course. And I actually do need to drive four solenoids.
I'll be interested to see your final circuit.
MK