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France
1 Level
749 Review
36 Karma

Review on DZS Elec Converter Adjustable Regulator by Juan Russell

Revainrating 3 out of 5

Works mostly as advertised, however mechanical design is questionable

Refill works mostly as advertised; I can't seem to get more than 2.5A at 13.6V, but admittedly I could already do that. abused mine. It seems to have a rough start (thought it was supposed to start off smoothly). The extra solder pads were a welcome feature. The potentiometers seem to have a little hysteresis so you probably only need to approach the setpoint from one direction. Also, at 2A and above, the heatsink will reach its limit temperature (about 60C), so you should probably take that into account. Unfortunately, the mechanical construction is not that good. Those are big gaps, but I don't see much benefit in using them. Properly placed M3 holes would probably be spot on. One of the screw holes is slightly covered by the LCD. I'm not particularly comfortable just using duct tape to secure the heatsink; this is made worse by the position of the LCD. Most likely I'll want to mount it in a vertical orientation so I can see the LCD, however this means the heatsink could fall off. They had to have a mounting hole to hold the heatsink in place or something. They really should round the corners of the PCB more. I think a 5.5 x 2.1mm barrel jack on the input would be fine. Or would be better with a multi-socket compatible board. Most of these changes would make it a little easier to design the case and integrate it into a proper compact product. Update: OK, this thing gets hot under load. (At 33W hit a stable thing like 84C on a radiator). This causes it to shut down in some way and its setup is quite inconvenient. It is advisable to install a fan. I have a fan bimetal switch that I could use, but again the mechanical design of this board makes installing accessories unnecessarily difficult. Shoot another star.

Pros
  • Great price
Cons
  • Lots of stuff