Mojo is back - fixing an LED driver
🕑 Added 2025-04-11 03:38:08 +0000 UTCI think I've been under the weather for the past few weeks. I've struggled to get into the mood for making videos. But now I'm feeling good and back into the swing of things.
That tends to happen once or twice a year.
Comments
Big Clive
I've a sneaky suspicion that many manufacturers don't take the bootstrap seriously despite its importance. Not just baking them dry due to poor placement, but using standard capacitors instead of low ESR and sometimes even undersizing them, especially when there is a high value of capacitance on the secondary side.
Alice Chapman
With SMPSs the first thing I change is the bootstrap cap. It is usually shoved in right next to a heatsink and gets baked dry.
Big Clive
They are usually the first suspect as they dry and change state over time.
Russell Couper
Glad your mojo came back. :D
Gadgetman
How did you diagnose that it was the capacitors causing the fault?