Monday, March 16, 2015

K-PO KPS30SW : Part 2 - adding a bi-metal thermal thingie.....

Hello all.....

About the title... As no-one posted a comment about what the proper name was of the temprature sensor, I still call it a "thingie"........

So yesterday i visited my good friend Hans (PD0AC). If you don't know him, you really should look at his blog as well <link>.

We started to talk about my PSU story and I told him about the bi-metal thermal thingie "missing" in one of them..... and he told me that he had "a few" laying around his shack.... (a few seems to mean between 20 and 30) so he gave me one of 60 degrees Celsius... meaning that it will close (make connection) if the temperature exceeds 60c we started to discus the temperature and we came to this conclusion...
  • lower has no use, because it will turn on too often in the warmer summer days
  • lower has no need as the power FET's will be ok till about 120c
  • higher is not needed as 60c is hot enough...
So today i put it in......

Opening this PSU is easy, flip it over and remove 6 screws....


And then you are left with this......


When you take a closer look at the back near the fan, you will see that K-PO has been nice enough to actually leave some taped holes where you can place the bi-metal thermal thingie without a problem..





So after bending the leads a bit for easier soldering , and adding some Thermal paste, i placed it where it should be....


Just a little tip..... the bolts i used were used to mount a floppy disk drive in the good old days...


Now in my opinion this all smells a bit like K-PO trying to reduce manufacturing costs... and let's be honest, i rather have them cut cost in a thermal switch thingy then something significant that can blow up your PSU.... But still, it's nice to have less fan noise in your shack.... 

And again, this in no way a bad PSU. You won't get more bang for your bucks as with K-PO PSU's
And after using them for about 5 years now, i do not believe they will fail anymore due to bad construction or design.


sneak preview: i also bought myself a K-PO SPS30II (which was 59 euro new!), more about that one in a few weeks.... 


73's
Alex
PA1SBM

2 comments:

  1. Hallo Alex, heb die post over dat dingetje waarschijnlijk gemist. Wij noemen zo een ding een clixon. Zoek maar op bij google. Word in allerlei apparaten toegepast waar warmte ontwikkeld word en meestal als oververhittingsbeveiliging. 73, Bas

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  2. Hello, I am Kajange from Tanzania. I have defective power the same as the one are discussing. Some components have been burnt in such a way it is impossible to read the component number. Can you help me the names of the following components: Ceramic Capacitors C7 and C8.

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