Variable Tension, current limited, 10Amp Power Supply Unit

[Christophe Mineau]

Hi Folks,

I'm on my way to prepare a homemade Metal plating setup, and for that I needed a power supply unit with good control on it.
Here it is, it's a nice extension to the previous one I already showed :
Benchtop Power supply
Which was basically a re-spin of an old powerful ATX PC power supply, delivering 12V, 5V , 3.3 V and -12V

Here, for plating application, I need more flexibility, so I made an extension to the ATX PSU, using a kind of magical board I discovered, which is based on the LTC3780 chip.
This boad can take any DC tension as input, and can deliver , whatever the input level is, a 1V to 30V, up to 10Amp.
So it's both a step up and step down regulator. All this is based on a digital circuit, and is quite sophisticated.
You can find the boad on the usual online market places, I purchased mine for 20€
Look for
"LTC3780 DC 12V Voltage Regulator Input 5-32V Output 1-30V Automatic Step Up Down Regulator Charging Module 10A"

So, I basically replaced the onboad micro potentiometers by faceplate "macros" ones, added a nice little voltmeter and ammeter.
First pot is for controlling output tension, second pot is for controlling current limitation.
If you set the current limit under the level that requires your load, the board lowers the tension so that the current is what was set the limitation to.
There is an other pot on board that sets an input under tension level, under which the boards stop working.

I added a PC fan, just in case ...

I put everything in a nice homemade wooden enclosure (no , it is not 3D printed, that's not the idea).
It is powered by my ATX PSU, it can be 5V or 12V no difference.

And here it is :